Emerald City

The sky looked like it was shaping up to put on a really fine sunset show the other week, so I decided to swing down and snap a shot of the City skyline. After arriving I set up my gear, took a few shots and waited for the sun to go down.

A few minutes later I noticed the clouds starting to clear. A couple minutes after the clouds were still continuing to clear. Within the course of about 30 minutes the sky went from quite cloudy to totally clear with not a cloud in the sky. Bummed, I ended up packing up my gear and taking off a couple minutes before sunset. Not the happiest of stories, but it happens.

This is a shot I took about 1/2 hour before sunset. I decided to go ahead and process the image so that I could try out some new techniques I have been working with. I'm interested in getting others opinion on the processing of this image. Let me know your thoughts.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/27883438@N07/9​146178593/

I like the light, but the sun is distracting. I would be really tempted to just crop it right out actually.

As for processing, I like it. It's got a nice warm vibrance to it. I might clone out the road construction sign, as that little bit of red/orange really catches your eye.

Todd Lambert wrote in post #16068289
I like the light, but the sun is distracting. I would be really tempted to just crop it right out actually.

As for processing, I like it. It's got a nice warm vibrance to it. I might clone out the road construction sign, as that little bit of red/orange really catches your eye.

Thanks Todd. I did experiment with cropping a bit and I think I liked cropping it just above the sun and then nudging the sun so it was almost all the way out of the frame (up). In the end I decided that I was just going to use the image for processing practice and left it as-is.

I should have explained myself better on the processing I was trying out. This is a four image hand blend using luminosity masking. Shooting into the sun allowed me to get an image that exceeded the DR of my sensor by a lot. I think I may have been able to do it with three images, but not realize it at the time. I really had fun using the luminance masks and look forward to using them in the future.

I like the shot and processing, and agree with Todd about the sun.

m52 wrote in post #16068430
I like the shot and processing, and agree with Todd about the sun.

Thanks for you input Randy.