-- Cory Christensen (scc@idcnet.com), July 06, 1998

Answers

Really cool (and marketable) stock image. The hint of purple in the top of the frame makes the shot. Interesting cropping: was the original 35mm?

-- Richard Shiell (rshiell@lightspeed.net), July 07, 1998.

Digital composite? Anyways, it is oversaturated -- the artist pegged the saturation control on PhotoShop (or whatever) at 100% before saving it. It would be interesting to see the source image(s).

-- Matthew Francey (mdf@my-dejanews.com), July 07, 1998.

Since I'm not a pro, I don't know if color oversaturation is related to marketability. However, if I wanted to hang this image on my wall, I might consider toning it down a bit. (Maybe it's just the gamma on my clunky UNIX box.)

Nice use of silhouettes as foreground images for scale. This image also appears to be a very good example of judicious cropping (black below, maybe a duller band of purple above).

-- Sean Yamamoto (seany@altavista.net), July 07, 1998.

The original was 35mm. I cropped out a little bit of peach-colored clear sky above the clouds. Matthew is 100% wrong though. This image is a straight scan with no special adjustments. I adjust the curves so that the image is as close to the original as possible. I never touched the saturation control. If you were to look at the original, it would look almost exactly like this shot. Of course the view will change from monitor to monitor so maybe on some monitors the colors appear wierd. On mine I just notice the grainy look added due to the jpeg compression.

-- Cory Christensen (scc@idcnet.com), July 07, 1998.

A very interesting shot!! The colors are haunting almost....

Want to give some technical data on this shot? Location, equipment, film, etc....? I'm curious, did you use a filter at all?

-- Jason Fobart (jfobart@usa.net), July 07, 1998.

Outstanding shot.

To Matthew: You can get this kind of saturation/color tonality by underexposing the scene by a stop or two. In all likelihood, that is what happened here...The actual sky color was lighter and the trees had some detail, but by underexposing--either accidentally (like I do) or on purpose, you get these spectacular results: deep, saturated reds in the sky against a black foreground.

-- James Tarquin` (tarquin@erols.com), July 07, 1998.

Technical info - Sensia 100 shot at 1.3 second @ f/32. 300mm lens. I shot this a few hundred yards away from my house in SE Wisconsin.

-- Cory Christensen (scc@idcnet.com), July 07, 1998.

oops - forgot, no filters and the exposure was deliberately set for the extreme saturation of colors.

-- Cory Christensen (scc@idcnet.com), July 07, 1998.

Isn't mother nature wonderful, She can give us such a beautiful shot like this and all we need: is to be their at the right moment, with a camera.

-- Tom Applegate (tapple@surfnetusa.com), July 09, 1998.

I don't know - it's one of those shots where your immediate reaction is "wow", but if you put it up on your wall in your living room, it would get really boring really fast.

-- (andreas@physio.unr.edu), July 20, 1998.

I like how the purple clouds at the very top stand out. They grab you! Great shot. I LOVE the suturation. Color is a good thing

-- Reece Taylor (taylorr@mornet.com), July 22, 1998.