This was one of the most amazingly colorful sunsets I have seen in ages, and yielded so many wonderful shots! It was hard to choose one, but since this one was shown on my local CBS affiliate news broadcast, I went with this one. It reminds me of lava erupting from a volcano, thus the title.
This is an HDR image composed of three shots, tonemapped with Photomatix. In Photoshop apply NI, adjust levels, hue & sat to bump down color, light application of LucisArt Whyeth filter, selective sat, dodge and burn, crop, then resize, USM, save for web.
********** Post Challenge ***********
Thanks so much to everyone for the votes, favs and positive comments! While this image is definitely 'enhanced', the bottom line is that we have amazingly beautiful skies here in New Mexico, so seeing scenes like this one is not that uncommon!
It was so nice being able to enter a multiple-exposure HDR image for a change; sure wish this was possible under advanced rules :-)
Statistics
Place: 4 out of 503 Avg (all users): 7.1935 Avg (commenters): 8.4286 Avg (participants): 7.1607 Avg (non-participants): 7.2791 Views since voting: 7250 Views during voting: 282 Votes: 155 Comments: 42 Favorites: 57 (view)
Owed you a look at your portfolio and this hit me between the eyes. Stunning. Would easily stand up against any newer such image 4 years later. I still have a D80 and at ISO 100 with its "older" CCD it is fabulously rich. Perfect for HDR or tone mapped images but also with ND filters or on its own.
AWESOME colleen .. totally brilliant scene and processed to perfection .. congratulations on an excellent score in the free study .. i'm a couple of months late !!..:)
Oh man! Somehow I missed this after August's Free Study. This is spectacular!!! You did such an expert job on processing this. Not too much, but fully utilizing the tools that bring out its finest qualities. Definitely wall hanging material. And what a tribute to its amazing quality -- to win a 4th place honorable mention in an expert editing free study. I'm in awe!
Well I gave this a 9 during the challenge and was delighted to see it do so well. It is not only the sky that is on fire at the moment it is also your photography
Many many congratulations on both the new PB and the brilliant 4th place in a Free Study (hell of an achievement)
First of all, I love the sky even though it looks heavily processed, it´s right up my alley in regards to taste, great texture and 3-D look. I do not like the foreground, too HDR and way too bright to fit in with that sky, I would have wanted to see it very dark but still with some details. That´s why I "only" voted a 7 :)
If this doesn't ribbon I'll start sling poo at the walls...of my friend canary house. Lovely picture, colors, clouds...I have nothing to say except I'd like to see the original image you worked with and the steps you took to get the image you got. 10
Nice shot - Like the tones - Wonderful lighting and nice PP - Wish there was some sort of foreground interest though to add some depth - Still a great shot to be proud of.
Awesome and worthy of a ribbon. I really hope you get one, but knowing how the voting community votes here, doubt it will get one. Hope you do though and you can have my vote. 10
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