Clouds #3

Since I've started taking interest in clouds and skies photography, I'm constantly looking up for different shots. All of the shots so far are from my house so there are many things like trees and houses that enable me to get wider shots. That's ok since I'm focusing on an isolated subject.

These 2 shots are not from the same day so that's why they're so different. For the first one I was really happy I could compose this since it's something I had in my mind for a while.

These shots were taken with my Fujifilm X-T3 + Fujinon XF55-200mm. This is out of camera raw with Lightroom presets (Adobe Color):

There's so much done to this image so I'll do my best to explain. Let's start with the global adjustments. Contrast +2, Highlights -70, Shadows +59, Clarity +20, Dehaze +49 and Vibrance +3. For the Tone Curve, I did the opposite of lifting the blacks, I crushed them a bit +12. Now the HLS has a big impact on the colors. Hue, Aqua +100, Blue -10, and Purple -100. Depending on your camera, you'll need to unsaturate purple because it's really distracting unless it's sunrise/sunset. For saturation, Blue -4. And that's it for global adjustments.

I have around 15 local brush adjustments but I'll focus on the most important ones. I have one for the clear area to dehaze (+6) that part. I have another big one for the bottom cloud since it's much darker than the others. Increased exposure a bit, Shadows a lot (+64) and Dehaze (-25) to soften. The other major one is for the highlights of the clouds. I increase Texture (+18), Whites (+7), and Temperature (+3). By increasing the whites, you sometimes get washed out white and it looks weird. That's what many other local brush adjustments are for.

143mm 1/250sec F/13 ISO 160

Another day, another cloud. Completely different from the first one but also another one I was trying to capture. I like the simplicity and the blues.

I tried to keep it simple with this one. For global, Shadows +14, Clarity +41, and Dehaze +13. In the HSL tab, the blue hue is set to -5 to get a bit more teal blue. Blue saturation is dropped by -17 and the luminance is dropped by -6. That's is for the global. I have one brush adjustment for the highlights area and I cranked the Texture by 46.

82mm 1/160sec F/13 ISO 160

I'm still looking at the sky and looking for compositions. I've located a nice big field so I will go there eventually and get nice sky/clouds pictures.