Dark Surreal Theme: Large moon and lightning

[Horizon]

Hello,
This is my first real attempt at matte-painting / heavy post processing. The original photo had a plain sky along with three lightning bolts. To go for a dark theme, I added an enlarged moon, and clouds from a couple of other photos. Color matched the layers in photoshop and added masks and dodge-burns.

However, I feel a disconnect between the foreground and background. Please help how I could improve this PP.



Here's the original photo:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4054/...f730fc5a_b.jpg

-Manu.

[LeeR]

That's a bit over the top for me. For one thing, placing the moon dead center is an amatuer's mistake. Keep in mind that as a general rule, the closer something is to the edge of the frame the more interesting it is. Also, it's a bit big. I know the moon looks huge when it first comes up, but even so, that's a touch overdone. My personal inclination would be to move the moon near the top of the frame, not forgetting to lighten the nearby clouds so they look like they are being lit by the moon. Your PP work is otherwise quite good.

[Horizon]

Thanks a lot, Lee, for the comments. Now I feel that placing the moon at the center of the frame looks boring. Its remarkable that we find the faults in our work when pointed to. Regarding the size of the moon, I was going for a surreal, large moon, as we see in some fantasy world PP works, but I guess its not large enough to convey that idea nor is small enough to appear real.

One technical thing I've learned form this work is that its important to have identical ISO values in the photos that you use for PP, since noise makes it all the more difficult to combine pictures.

Anyways, thanks for viewing and for the comments; I hope I can improve my work along.

-Manu.

[Barbara V]

Reminds me of a cinematic photograph.... like a scene out of Superman; Gothem city.

[Laurenbiz]

I do absolutely love your concept. This photo is very cool. I agree that the large moon dead-center seems bland. I would suggest experimenting with the moon higher up in the frame, and possibly off-center.

Also, because the moon is never this large, it tends to look 'fake.' I hate to use that word, though.

Again, though, I do love this! I would just decrease the size of the moon a tad, and play around with it in different areas. Great work :-)