Phoenix Rising, I & II

Another in my toned series ... captured in 2005, at the end of a backpacking trip to Ice Lake Basin in the San Juans. The dynamics of the clouds were like nothing I had seen before - and haven't seen since.

I welcome all comments and critiques.

Excellent Jesse. Very unusual cloud shapes here.

The shot is great, and the title sells it! I remember your portfolio from Ice Lake Basin, it's better than any one I've ever seen. To think this was still lurking in the shadows is just plain depressing to us mere mortals.

Very Nice... I like this a lot.
The only thing that im still unsure about is how I cant get past the feeling the mountain is warped
Other than that I still like this quite a bit

Great clouds and I love your toning as usual. I love wide angle skies like this.
The only thing I can think of to possibly improve this would be to slightly darken the scree slopes of the peaks or the peaks overall, just to move more of the focus to the clouds/sky. But this is a real nit and may do nothing to improve the image.
Beautiful!

Wow, I've never seen such intense clouds. Great tones as well.

Very appropriate title, Jesse. Gorgeous image and perfect toning. I love it.

Wow! Those clouds are amazing. I like this toning, but I can't help but wonder what this looks like in color. Nice job.

Awesome shot. I thought it was a waterfall at first glance.

Nate, you're right - it's a funky mountain. There are some diagonals on this peak that are very disorienting. And the corner edge of a 17mm shot doesn't help either.

I may try that suggestion Kalin.

Thanks for the suggestions/comments so far. Ice Lake was certainly very, very generous to me during my visit. It was hard to leave, with clouds like this hanging around.

Very nice. It was your ice lake shots that inspired me to go hike up there. To be honest the bottom here feels cut-off to me, although i understand the intent.

I really the composition used to capture those impressive clouds.
I'm just imagining what that would look like at sunset !

That's crazy - wild cloudscape and comp. Sweet!

Wow, you are really figuring out this photography stuff! Beautiful shot! When I first began to scroll down to see the image, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. Great processing, this one is wonderful!

First I thought it was an aerial shot of an ocean coastline (sort of a Rorschach Test). Wild clouds, they really show movement. Cool comp.

Indeed the clouds seem to be emanating from the mountains, and gathering into a phoenix. Great title for this one. You are killing these toned images.

This is beautiful, Jesse. You've got the toning down too. It does feel a bit tight at the bottom, but the sky is strong enough to overcome that.

Thanking for chiming in guys. I appreciate the notes on the toning - something I've fiddled with for quite awhile now. They are quite as saturated in print, but you get the idea.

Here's another comp from the same morning - one that will likely be included in the same "atmospheric" series (they seem different enough) ...

I love the big sky images and the toning looks good too.

That second one looks like a horse's tail, and I believe that is the term used for those types of clouds.

I like that last one much more, just the right amount of fg IMO.

Excellent! I'm enjoying this series of images.