-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), November 30, 1998

Answers

Taken with a Minolta 800si, ProMaster AF 28-200mm Aspherical Lens at about 80mm, Kodak Max 800, Camera on Full Program mode.

High light clouds were moving south, very low dark moving north, and the sun was setting. I had about 20 minutes of shooting before the dark clouds blocked everything.

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), November 30, 1998.

Ben, this is an unusual image taken at the right time. I do not believe I have seen anything like it. The round cloud looks like going to burst with light any second! Thanks for sharing.

-- Bahman Farzad (cpgbooks@mindspring.com), December 01, 1998.

Thanks for the kind response. I just got back some 11X14 prints that look great (considering the lens). My question now is how can I make the image that I put here show some of the sharpness of the prints without exceeding the file size limitations. I thought it was the nature of the clouds but the trees shown here just don't maintain sharpness. I used photoshop and the suggestions on the server and I did start with a 50 meg file which was quite nice viewed on my power mac. I seem to lose it somewhere in the jpeg compression I think. Any suggestions would be welcome. I would like to try this again. Is the 50K limit strictly adhered to or is there a tolerance?

Thanks for your help.

Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 03, 1998.

Never mind. I got a good answer in the photo.net Q&A

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 07, 1998.

I was just admiring my enlargement of this photo. It is beautiful in its detail, coloration, tonal values, and drama. The rays coming from the cloud mass are awsome. Certainly no one will ever duplicate it.

The question is am I a genius, self deluded, or what do I have to do to improve this type of shot. I am very good in photoshop and would love to try out some suggestions for my own benefit to improve my photography. I can't do this unless someone looking at the image with a different thought process tells me something! Please give some input. Is no answer a good answer? Are your computers broke? Was Bahman the only person that saw my effort? I am retired and don't have a lifetime to perfect the craft. But I want to make damn beautiful photos. Help is appreciated and needed.

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 10, 1998.

I just came across your image here and I thought I'd take a stab at critisism. First off, it is a very nice photo. Very dramatic and the exposure works very well for this type of subject. My one negative comment is about cropping. Try and crop the photo down on the left side to the left edge of the tallest tree. This will eliminate that gray area of the sky that has no interest. It will also shape the sillouette of the trees into a "U" shape that will keep the viewers eye in the picture instead of leading it out of the image on the left. I like the inclusion of the stick-bush on the right. It gives the sillouetted tree line some character and breaks up the symmetry of the framing of the sky. Are you a genius or just deluded? That depends upon what else you can do. This was a really nice effort though.

-- Fritz M. Brown (brownf{DHWTOWERS/TOWERS3/brownf}@dhw.state.id.us), December 30, 1998.