I like the concept... and the upper part, with the bright sky and the dark clouds, is really striking. I /love/ the upper part.
I think the cloud is /too/ overpowering in the rest of the image, however. It blocks out the trees below, and makes that little line of light look almost more like noise to me. Crop the photo into a landscape instead of a portrait, just keeping the top, and I think I love it.
For me, the point of high contrast is to draw attention to something, or to make something stand out. In my two example shots at the beginning of the thread...
With "Cathedral of Mass Transit," the bands of light on the subway station ceiling are something I meant to immediately draw the eye to the arching ceiling... the cathedral-like shape that I wanted to capture.
With "Ascent into Light," the deliberate overexposure at the top of the escalators... the bright white light draws the eye to it naturally. If I had a lower contrast -- if I had NOT blown out the white at the top -- I don't think it would've been terribly interesting. The dark parts of the escalators remove the features... you know they're escalators, but you can't see the steps, so it adds something to the whole odd 'ascent into light' (or "stairway to heaven" as my friend Kaylan puts it) effect.
Now, granted, don't think that I wasn't really planning either shot meticulously! In one, it was just two days of "Okay, I need to find a time when I'm not dashing madly between trains to get a picture of this platform because the arched ceilings make me think of a cathedral, and I like that imagery. Now I have the time, let's try taking shots with about 7 different sets of settings, to see what comes out the way I like." With the other, it was just "Whee! I've had this camera for about a week... let's see what happens if I shoot with THIS setting, which should create something with an absurd contrast. I wonder what it'll look like..."
