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Yesterday morning as we were heading south from our northern California visit, we saw this amazing cloud at the top of Mount Shasta. The sun was rising behind the mountain and the "cloud" was likely snow or ice crystals being whipped about the summit by strong winds. The swirling winds give the "cloud" a somewhat biomorphic appearance. The angle of the sun relative to the cloud created a rainbow effect. I didn't push saturation or vibrance in the image but I did expose for the cloud which made the mountain a little darker than it was in person. The cloud and rainbow effect was short lived but I've never seen anything quite like it and felt fortunate to be at the right place at the right time with the camera. It's not so much a great photograph as a very interesting phenomenon - had to share it.
Wow - what luck that you were there at the right time! Weren't we just talking about f8 and be there?
I like the overall effect of the "darkened" mountain and sky. But I'm wondering if it's just my crappy work monitor or is there something odd going on in the sky?
Thanks all. Because it was changing rapidly I wrestled my camera from the case in the back seat and shot hand held....I would love to have tried a tripod HDR for this scene.
Mike, I don't think there's anything going on in the sky apart from the cloud and there's some light coming around the other edges of the mountain.
Wow - what luck that you were there at the right time! Weren't we just talking about f8 and be there?
I like the overall effect of the "darkened" mountain and sky. But I'm wondering if it's just my crappy work monitor or is there something odd going on in the sky?
The sky is a bit blotchy and pixelated in places, though you have to look close to see it. The reason for that is almost certainly jpg compression. i.e. Whe he downsized the image to upload it to the web, it took the nice smooth tranisition the sky had before and made it more abrupt and blocky. That's one of the ways jpg makes a file smaller, combines blocks of closely related colors into one single color. It's most noticable in the sky or other areas of very smooth transition.
The good news? The orginal image probably does not have that blotchiness, it's simply due to file compression.
After seeing Mike and Bob's comments I went back to the original again and when I zoomed in I saw the blotchy effect in the sky. I went back to the RAW image file and reworked it and reworked it in photoshop as a TIFF then finally converting it to JPEG. I think I've cleared up the blotchy sky a lot. The original was ISO 100 in early morning light and I had a -2 compensation to make sure I didn't blow out the glowing cloud. I think that brought in a bit of noise because of the low light and -2 compensation. I did other things to try to improve the exposure and detail without touching saturation/vibrance. I wanted to keep the cloud as close to natural as possible. Thanks for the encouraging and helpful comments all.
Here's the rework:
I'm still seeing some blotchy stuff here but the revised original looks much better.
Mount Shasta City, at the base of the mountain, has a history of offbeat religions and mystical belief systems tied to the mountain. In recent years it has taken on a New Age flavor which is essentially old age mysticism with concepts of ascended masters, reincarnation and other eastern religious concepts. The Lumirians are mythical creatures that are supposed to live on the mountain. There's a lot of divergent beliefs surrounding them and it's been a long time since I read about them but many people from the area are familiar with them as folk mythology and a few have encompassed them into an ecclectic mystical religious system. I hope I haven't stepped on any Lumerian toes with this description.
Mount Shasta City, at the base of the mountain, has a history of offbeat religions and mystical belief systems tied to the mountain. In recent years it has taken on a New Age flavor which is essentially old age mysticism with concepts of ascended masters, reincarnation and other eastern religious concepts. The Lumirians are mythical creatures that are supposed to live on the mountain. There's a lot of divergent beliefs surrounding them and it's been a long time since I read about them but many people from the area are familiar with them as folk mythology and a few have encompassed them into an ecclectic mystical religious system. I hope I haven't stepped on any Lumerian toes with this description.
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