I took this just after sunset a couple of weeks ago at the Southern Most tip of Tasmania just before a big storm blew through.

I cant make up my mind about it and would greatly appreciate any thoughts or comments.
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Was taken with a Canon 1DSMK3 with 24mm F1.4L MKII at F11 5.0 seconds with a 3 stop ND Grad. PP in LR 2.5. I have not done much to the image at all other than set white/black point, sharpen and add a slight curve and +20 vibrance. White Balance is as shot.

Josh, Have you considered this?

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It's a natural for B&W.

Great image, but it's a little TOO magenta for me. Really like the B&W, though.

Mike.

I agree with your comment. My initial reaction was that saturation was pushed a bit too far. The B/W version is better in my opinion. Desaturation of the magentas could probably produce a more pleasing image.

I agree. I think desaturating the magenta a little might help the colour version. I think the B&W is excellent, but I wonder if the sky couldn't be made a little more dramatic thanin Russ's conversion. It is a brewing storm, after all!

Jeremy

Josh, I like this scene! Technically speaking I like it beside of the composition because of the warm/cold contrast. However, the colors seem also a bit odd to me, in line with what was pointed out before.

What I would do, I would try to find a better whitebalance, wich can be tricky for such scenes. The question is to find a good combination between whitebalance, saturation and global contrast. Depending on light conditions and composition anything between 3.8k and 10k can work potentially. My technique setting WB for such a scene, where Im unsure, is as follow:

In order to better discern the colors I overcrank saturation to 70-100%. Then I rebalance WB in order to find a pleasing ratio between warm and cold tones, so that both are equally well presented on screen. Then I take back saturation to suit my taste, and do more finetunings from there. Sometimes this basically recreates, or subtly modifies AWB, sometimes I get a whole different result. Generally with such evening scenes, I find it is quite easy to overdo things, like setting too high contrast (but the contrast here is fine for me) or to overdo saturation. Often the common error is to oversaturate either cold or warm tones with wb and then to overcrank saturation to compensate for this wrong wb. One possible sign of proper WB for me is that I need comparably moderate saturation, but there are of course exceptions.

Hope this helps,


Christian

That sky is wonderful. Do try and retain that feel somewhat..

Jeremy's right. A "multiply" gradient like this might help. I'm in a rush and I overdid it, but you get the idea.

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I'm not sure about the etiquette of hacking other people's photographs, but since Russ has started, I think I might as well join in. How about this, done in LR only?

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Jeremy

Just suggestions. I like your last one.

Jeremy,
I like the warmth of your offering rather than the coldness of Russ'.

Pup

Thanks, Pup. It's an arbitrary split tone preset in Lightroom which I fiddled for myself a while ago and have found meets my needs: I use it (or at least, I try it) on most of my B&W shots now. In case you want to give it a go, it's hue 49, saturation 19 in the highlights and hue 225, saturation 10 in the shadows, with balance set at zero. I wouldn't pretend that there's anything magical in the numbers, though.

Jeremy

Thanks Jeremy. I'll give it a try.

Pup

Thanks Gents.

I have a B&W conversion - which I quite like.

I have pretty much decided the colour shot doesn't quite make it - although I still cant put my finger on the reasons.

Could you show it to us? It would be interesting to compare it to the attempts that Russ and I have made.

Jeremy

Sure, I like the B&W treatments, which are more "correct" (whatever that means) for the subject. However, the colour original is just wild, and that is the one that gets a second look from me.

Ed