Flare Up

Thats an awesome sky and a wonderfull reflection, you picked your moment well! I do feel that due to the poles/fence? in the fg this image should be in the man & nature gallery instead of here.

I do apologise, you're right. Perhaps the mods could shift this one for me.

edit: never mind that, got it.

A spectacular sky. Glad you were at a place where you could show its reflection. Your centered horizon was a good choice, IMO.

You were very wide at 16mm, yet had to clip some of the sky drama. It's scenes like this that compelled me to get a Sigma 12-24. It is compatible with full frame sensors.

This is an ideal situation for a hard edge GND, but you used a soft edge. Did you have the option of using a 3-stop hard edge GND but chose the soft edge? If so, why?

I'd suggest trying to see if you could brighten the corners slightly using the vignette tool in lens correction.

Bottom line: Fabulous photograph.

Beautiful patterns. It was worth the wait.

Oh my... that's really incredible. Those clouds are just amazing, and the lighting is very pleasing to the eye. One of my favorite times of the day. Your exposure is right on and those reflections make this such a strong image. Thanks for sharing Andrew!

Thanks Phil and Martin appreciate the comments.

Buck, I did consider the 12-24mm when getting the 16-35 recently but on some advice thought the 16-35 was a better lens. When some cash becomes availably I'll certainly have another look at the Sigma. As for the filters I've got a range of HiTechs on order but soft edge is all I've got at the moment.

I quite liked the vignetting but I agree perhaps its a bit too much. Thanks for looking and I appreciate the comments.

Very cool shot. Love the exploding sky. Some more control over the highlights would have been the icing on the cake but this is very close to perfection. Regarding the Sigma I thought that was for cropped sensors only, hence 12mm is really 18mm.

Thanks Kah Kit, the highlights was my main issue with this one as you've mentioned...oh for the want of more filtration :)

I didn't look into it too much as I was set on the Nikon anyway, but the 10-20mm is for crop and the 12-24mm is for full frame I think.

A beautiful scene Andrew - nicely captured. Would have loved to have seen this in person.

Well done! Great light and excellent capture with dramatic color and shapes in the sky.

Fantastic opportunity and you certainly did a great job of capturing the scene, Andrew! Nice job with the processing also. I don't think I would want to try and bring out the detail in the shadows for this scene. It would only distract from the main event. Very well done!

Awesome image Andrew! One whereby the heavy dark vignetting works well!

Thanks guys, much appreciated. I do love it when mother nature makes our work easy. :)

gorgeous sky and very well-captured -
Congrats on the EP!
Sandy r

Thanks Sandy and thanks to the Eds, I'm really quite flattered.

Congratulations, Andrew, for the EP. Well deserved.
And thanks for taking the time to answer the questions from my first comment.

My first GND was a soft edge, and soon after I got some hard edge ones. I live in a flat coastal area and with the hard edge GNDs, I hardly use the soft edge. The Sigma 12-24 is the only lens that wide that is usable on a body with a FF sensor. It is a great adjunct to my 17-40mm. It is well built, reasonably priced (compare to the newly announced Canon 8-15mm fisheye) and optically pretty good - a little soft on the edges, but I think that is expectable.

Wow, beautiful sky, congratulations on the EP!