Some rain blew through this afternoon. These are the clouds. This is straight from the camera, no editing, offered for Richard Sayer's @vignouse "back to basics" month of all in-camera work.
The reason I am pleased with this shot is that I was able to use a newly-discovered button to reduce the highlights and bring up some shadows for the shot in-camera, avoiding the blown-out bright areas of the cloud's edge.
Anyway, thanks for tolerating my experiments and thanks for visiting.
10/1/2020: Finished year 7 (!), with continuing gratitude towards this amazing community. Based in St. Louis, MO. Regular worker-bee and self-taught photography dilettante....
@jgpittenger You should check it out. If I recall, you shoot with a nice Nikon? I would be surprised if there wasn't some way to do this "in camera." My Oly has a button on the top with a wiggly line, like an enhanced tone curve. I had not noticed it before (duh). Maybe the manual would be a good place to start. I hadn't read mine in months. Good luck!
@taffy Thanks! This "shoot and post" exercise is really much more fun than I originally anticipated. It forces you to search for workarounds "in camera" that you would have usually just defaulted to fix in post-processing.
@rosiekerr I did a few today, but then had a bonanza time with a spider hanging across the deck stairs outside my study at home. So it was 105 macro day today and processing. Starting tomorrow, I'll have ONLY my 50 with me. Have decided to only do sooc for the color work, but allow myself to take the same image and process for b&w natural lighting theme. I realized I was setting it up to not have much fun with too many restrictions on myself. I love what you've been doing with @vignouse Richard's challenge.
What a fabulous outcome Rosie. I had never noticed this button either! The camera shop set it up as the ISO button for me (back in the day when I knew even less than I do now) but I managed to change it back to get the curve. Do you have to set the curve back to neutral after each shot? Thank you so much again for the learning (even if it has hijacked what I was supposed to be doing this morning!) :)
@pistache You don't have to change it back to neutral after each shot, but you certainly can do that if you want to. When you push the button, the tone curve will appear on your "live view" screen on the back of your camera. The front roller adjusts the highlights; the back roller adjusts the shadows. If memory serves, holding down the "ok" button resets. Fun!