Burning Morning Clouds

Terrific colors in the sky and backlighting on the foreground hills. Looks like a wonderful place to explore. For me, the competition between the sky and the foreground keeps this from feeling balanced. I could see cropping some of the darkest parts of the sky to emphasize the landscape or cropping the first ridge to emphasize the sky. It's a lovely scene.

Thanks for your comments, Mark. I couldn't crop any of it since the foreground has lines that would disappear and the clouds have lines and curves that would be missed. I could crop a tiny bit from the top but I felt it was better without. That's just the way I see it. Please don't see as me defending my picture, it's more an explanation which you may agree upon or not.

Stunning. I have no nits.

the fisch

Wonderful color. Looks like the sky is burning.

Awesome sky!

This looks like a great place. You had a wonderful dramatic sky. The composition is simple but it works well for me here.

That sky steals the show. I think you could crop out the entire foreground and turn this into a panoramic image to emphasize that sky as my eye is stuck on that.

Hans, this is some jaw-dropping light!

Awesome sky! I agree with Mark on the comp--i understand your reasoning, but the way i see it this should be an integrative comp--the sky and landscape should compliment each other. The top portion (distant hills) does compliment, but the bottom portion is green. Green and red clash--for that reason if it were mine id crop the bottom part.

A great moment captured.. Stunning clouds.

Thanks Stan, if the image should be cropped I think it would work best with a little cropping from the top. The grass in the foreground has only little green left in it as it is autumn and it is more brownish and yellowish. The altitude is around 1500-1600 meters where the picture was taken.

I really like the colors you've captured in the sky. Others have commented on the foreground, and I agree that it is a bit out of place. I like the chosen composition and the foreground lines, but the foreground exposure is a bit too bright for the sky. There really isn't any reason why the tops of the mountains should be any darker than the foreground. They're all in shadow. I think the brightness of the foreground is what's throwing it off. If that was darkened down, or if you somehow worked to reduce the deep shadows along the tops of the mountains, maybe it would blend a bit better. As it stands, the foreground and sky have a bit of a visual miss-match.

Thanks very much Ben for your feedback and thoughts. Did you look at the large version? On my monitor they look different in both Safari and Firefox and it looks like the profile has been lost on the smaller one although (of course) the sRGB profile was in the JPG that I uploaded. The reds in the clouds that are strong in the smaller one are not as strong in the larger one. I tried different light levels on the foreground which of course is lifted from a neutral RAW conversion several stops since I did not use a grad filter in this shot. I ended up with this version. I felt that the foreground didn't really work if it was much darker. But maybe the current look is so locked into my mind that I can't see it differently
I did also try different crops but I felt the picture lost some impact by cropping.
But thanks again for all the comments which are all worth while.
The picture is developed in Lightroom 4 (RC2) from a single RAW file with no clipped highlights (I checked the RAW histogram).

Looks kind of like the Scottish Highlands. Gorgeous, dramatic light Hans! The large version has much more impact!

really dramatic color

Wow, what a sky! Looks great to me..