High Drama

Here is another image that I captured along the Blue Ridge Parkway on my trip last month.  I have to admit that when I captured this image in the field that I wasn't thinking of a black and white comp.  It wasn't until later as I was reviewing the image on the LCD that I thought of black and white.  I exposed this to maintain all of the highlight detail which meant that the shadow detail was really dark on my LCD.  I knew with the dynamic range of my camera that the shadow detail was there, but when I saw the strong contrast with the deep shadows I liked the way that it enhanced the impact of the light beams so I decided to go with a black and white conversion.  

As I was processing the image, I made another creative decision.  When I captured this in the field there was warm light coming down through the clouds.  A pure black and white conversion made the image feel more ominous and lost some of the inviting feel of the warm light.  To bring back some of that feel I added a slight toning to the image.  It's subtle, but I think that it helps capture some of what I felt as I experienced this moment.  I will post the pure B&W below for comparison. 

As always all comments and critiques are welcome.  Please view the large image. 

Capture Info:
35 mm
f/8, 1/1000 sec., ISO 100