Yorkshire Dales...Limestone Pavement

[shaunw]

A dull damp winters morning turned into one of those wonderful high pressure winters afternoons, as the sunsets behind me. I was pleased to get the clouds so low without it raining, the limestone pavements are a left over from the last ice age and obviously a seabed at some point in history .

Yorkshire Dales...Limestone Pavement. by Shaunwalby Photography, on Flickr

[johnbeardy]

Dark haloes round the clouds? Instead of clarity / definition / structure, go for a more red filter look for the sky - ie darkening it in the conversion rather than with clarity. Top corners a bit heavy?

[shaunw]

John

Yep the main cloud does have a dark halo....thanks

[johnbeardy]

I'd expect a clarity / structure type adjustment to work very well on any limestone pavement, but there's the danger of the cloud haloes. So assuming you're using Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, a grad filter with a +ve clarity value would be pulled up from the base of the frame. The main issue I see here is balance - the limestone is about the same light tone as the sky so the eye is drawn equally to both, not to the one that's really interesting. That's why I said darken the sky during the conversion - the eye will pushed down onto the landscape. I assume it's around Malham?

[shaunw]

John i can see you know your business....have to say i was torn here although the limestone pavement is highly interesting it wasn't my main focal point of interest ...the tree was thus the image was lightened in this area the darker aspect of the foreground was natural shadows. This isnt the finished article by a long way there is more ''power'' to get out of this image mainly i think via darkening and lightening specific areas....could i ask would you use the red channel to darken the skys during the conversion....i just got lightroom but iam not up and running with it yet it so Raw conversion efex pro/optipix,  structured lightly contrast graded.

Many people have thought this was Malham, this is a scarr near Inglborough