BnW on a dull day - pls comment for the sky blown out

[laurel2sg]

Hi, I would like to know if it's ok to have the sky totally blown out in a BnW photo. That was a very dull day. The sky was just thick thick heavy cloud.

Many thanks.



Camera PENTAX K-7
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture f/4.0
Focal Length 70 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias +0.7 EV

[MaxBrook]

to be honest it is quite distracting from the picture itself, but maybe its also because the rest of the image is quite underexposed, what I would have tried to do in this weather, as you could hardly avoid the white sky would be to include as few of it as possible (change your composition to 8 parts of land and only one part of sky or so

[KansaiGreenie]

Hi laurel2sg,

This is an interesting scene. I can see why you wanted to photograph it.

if it's ok to have the sky totally blown out in a BnW photo

The great thing about photography is that everything is OK, it's up to your own artistic vision. If you are happy with a big white sky, then great!

Having said that, I don't really think it works in this image. I think I would like it better with less sky. However, the sky is not completely blown out. There is some detail there. You might try playing around with things like the contrast and exposure to see if you can get some more detail there.

I hope that helps.

KG

[laurel2sg]

I had adjusted, increased the shadow, highlight and definition.

The sky has details now and thanks for your comment, the photo looks much much better.

[IABoomer]

I think you could find a happy medium between the blown out look and the heavily processed look that you have now. I find the second one kind of distracting since the edit to the sky seems very severe and it leaves a halo effect along the tree line.

Here's my take on the above, which I will remove if you'd like.

- open original image
- duplicate to a second layer
- use a curves adjustment to bring up some detail in the sky, but not enough to expose noise or posteration (where areas become flat blobs of one color) [points at (45,90) (128,128) and (220,170) {where points are listed in (x,y) format in GIMP}]
- add a layer mask to isolate the sky from the landscape, since the curve adjustment flattened out the foreground
- add a little high-pass sharpening