Row, Row, Row Your Hill

It was a dark and stormy evening in Bozeman...actually it was pleasantly warm, with dramatic skies and even more dramatic lighting. I was off hunting down a good location to shoot some of the mile long, yes mile long, sun beams coming out of the sky.  Ending up on Peat's Hill, I got a couple good ones of the hills way west of here as they were struck by the rain and sun beams coming down.

But I didn't end up liking the pictures as much as I liked something else.

As I was walking back to the car, I looked behind me and saw the light hitting some hill sides with the dramatic blue skies behind it. I grabbed a quick shot and knew I loved it right away. It was totally my style of photo. Very 2D, just two layers and almost no really depth to it. The hills gently rolled their way through the frame as the dark sky looms behind them.  I wish I would have had a red filter or maybe a polarizer on to make the sky a bit darker. As it was I had to do it in Lr, which doesn't really look all that great.

I shot at 1/80, f6.3 and ISO100. Nothing really special about these settings, just happened to be what worked and got a good exposure.

The first thing I did in editing was covert to b/w and then crop the bottom of the image down to make the hills fall on the lower third of the image. This makes a much more pleasing composition in my eyes, as it still is about the hills, but takes on the sky as well.

Looks pretty good just after that. There's some clarity, highlights and contrast adjustments as well at this point. Everything up a tad. I also raise the blacks end of the tonal curve to mute the blacks a bit. Just to make the hillside a little less contrasty at that end of the spectrum.

Next went on the local adjustments. I raised the clarity and contrast on the hill side, then lowered the exposure, raised the clarity and contrast in the sky. All that was really to add some pop to the picture, which I think really helped things.

The top image is with a brush to paint in the sky, and the lower was with a gradient filter. I like the top image more with the darker sky and lighter ground. There is more of a transition between the sky and the ground, but I don't think it's too noticeable. Maybe I'll change my mind about that though later.

This was the other image from tonight.

See you tomorrow!