I captured this image a few weeks back now. At the time I wasn’t sure quite how best to process it and to be honest I’m still not sure.
I captured this from Bamford Edge in the Peak District looking across Hope Valley to the cement works. It was a little before sunset and the conditions were quite challenging. Not because they were unpleasant but because the light was so bright. The valley was filling with fog and the low sun was streaking through the clouds. I couldn’t see the image properly on the back of the camera and even using the viewfinder I was struggling.
At the time it looked like the conditions were so bright that they exceeded the cameras dynamic range, even using a three-stop Kase Soft ND Grad filter. I did bracket the shot (with the filter) using five exposures. My thinking was that I would create an exposure blend, but the image above is a single exposure. With some tweaking in Lightroom, I was able to control the exposure enough to create a good base image. Much of the processing was then with Luminosity Masks (using Lumenzia) before converting to black and white using Nik Silver Efex Pro.
I’m probably going to revisit the image when I have more time.
Have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
I lile it but i would be tempted to go for more contrast or dodge and burn and perhaps make it a bit more grainy, looks too “pale” on my monitor.
I did warn that I wasn’t sure how to best process it. I did try it with more contrast but it didn’t look good. Having said that I had the benefit of seeing the scene which didn’t have a lot of contrast at ground level but the dynamic range was higher up in the clouds. If you try to replicate that in the image it looks even worse. I guess this is one for the shelf until I feel some inspiration.
Robin,
I tend to agree with what is said above. I think the upper half works but the lower is somewhat washed out. I wonder if masking this & under exposing the lower half would make a difference? Part of it may be a lack of enough tonal range simply to work with monochrome. As you said the intense brightness was of concern for digital capture. Bit of a challenge.
Jed
I think people are expecting to see the contrast and dark tones on the ground but that wasn’t how it looked. The ground was very washed out and misty and all the contrast was in the clouds further up, mainly from very bright highlights. When I tried to work it differently, the results didn’t look good.
The fog is beautifully understated. Yet it does seem to lack a ‘sparkle’, and I’m wondering if we are so used now to images that have high contrast, ramped up saturation and biting sharpness that subtle etherial moments no longer resonate for us.
Perhaps if the darker clouds were a few tones darker yet, and the foreground had a base, it might be stronger, but then, I know you’d lose the feel of that mist.
Tough call. Glad you shared it.
There definitely wasn’t any sparkle in this scene. Lots of sun rays, mist and very bright highlights through the clouds. I’ll put this to one side for a while I think.