Landscape Photo Competition 2011 : Entry Number 918

Judges Comment

Beautifully soft colours and tones and graphic composition make this a wonderful image. The photographer has successfully, and tastefully, captured one of nature’s dramatic displays, packing all the beauty and power of that moment into a pleasing photograph.

The gusty wind movement in the grass softens the field and makes the picture real, the saturated colours those of the pre-storm. I see no lightning but i feel the electricity in the air. The cloud formations and detail are wonderful and my eye is drawn along them into the very magnetic, red centre.

So this photo has been technically very well taken, but has also been very sensitively processed. Contrast has been kept natural, and effective vignetting darkens the corners nicely holding our gaze and preventing it from dropping off the edges. I love the thin strip of light grass along the bottom of the frame which sets off the rest of the image, but sadly some of that grass is burnt out (left of centre) and so a little troubling, distracting from an otherwise harmonious, fulfilling scene.

Photographers Comment

Thank you very much! This image was taken during a trip to Nebraska and there happen to be an awesome storm to the west, which I of course had to stop and shoot! In post processing all I did was remove a fence and boost the saturation a tiny bit. After we reached our destination we found out that the storm was actually a tornado brewing! Deborah Flack Nikon D3100