| Skies |
Print only |
| 1 entry allowed (consisting of the before and after image) |
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Skies often make a landscape. Dramatic cloud formations can add punch to the image. Cloudless or uniformly grey skies are often boring, although an intensely blue, polarized sky, even without clouds, can provide a dramatic effect provided it does not occupy too much of the image space.
Even in the pre-digital age restricted to film, many photographers maintained (and still do!) stock photographs of dramatic cloud formations that they would “print in” to their otherwise cloudless skies in the darkroom, by double exposing in the enlarger and dodging out the overlap with the main landscape. Now this can be done more easily in the computer, as has been demonstrated in a DIPSIG lecture. Darkroom processors have often intensified skies and this, too, can be done digitally. Photographers have also used infrared filters on their cameras to intensify cloud formations and provide dramatic effects often not entirely visible to the naked eye.
Take a photo of a landscape on a cloudless or overcast day. Frame it such that the sky occupies at least half the photograph. Take another photo (or retrieve one from your file) containing a dramatic cloud formation. Replace the dull sky of the first photograph with clouds from the second photograph. Manipulate the image (such as using intensification) to dramatize the sky. You may also want to add a “morning” moon peeking out from behind the clouds!
Take care to make sure that the final image looks as natural as possible, paying particular attention to the “boundary” between sky and land. The clouds should look as if they were there in the first place!
Print both the original image and the final image such that they can be mounted side by side on a standard 16” x 20” mountboard with space left around to frame the images. |
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