Sprague Lake - Surging Clouds

Wednesday morning I had a bit of time before meeting frends for a hike to Dream Lake. The weather forecast was for clear skies, so I didn't expect much, but I arrived early anyway. After sunrise, the clouds kept building and surging over the divide. The wind gusts were at least 40mph as I walked across Sprague Lake. I cranked up the ISO and shutter speed and crossed my fingers some shots between the worst gusts would be sharp.

This is a stitch of 3 vertical images.
Canon 70-200mm f4 IS @ 100 mm, ISO 400, 1/1,250 sec, f8

Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.0 conversion. Just trying out the newly released version. I really like the additional controls.

Critiques welcome. Do you prefer the color or B&W ?

I think I like the color a tad better. A little more contrast in the B/W might help.

I also prefer the color. Love the cloud action, but the lake kind of teases me with just that sliver on the bottom. Are there any decent ice patterns in Sprague?? Ive only seen it covered in snow...

I really like the black and white, Bill. The deep shadow in the trees in the color version doesn't work for me, but in the black and white it's just fine. That black sky and the puffy white clouds are sweet, too.

Thanks for the input, guys.

Stan, I didn't see any interesting ice patterns on Sprague, but I was short of time and not looking very hard.

Great boiling billowing clouds, Bill! I like both on different levels, but slightly prefer the color. Excellent work! Hoping we can shoot together this next week.

Definitely feeling the B&W Bill.

I'm feelin' the b&w as well, mostly for the reasons that Bret stated.

Bill, I really like both but the color is probably my favorite of the two. One thing I probably rely on too much, but I would try on the color one, is the gradient tool in camera raw. I apologize in advance for messing with your picture without asking first. Here is a screen shot of the tool. You can pick the color for the gradient to use, in this case blue for the sky. It's an interesting thing to play with and sometimes you get good results.

Russ
www.AlpineGalleria.com

Russ, thanks for taking the time to add an instructive example. I do use the gradient tool a lot, but never with a color.

Your gradient does add much more drama to the clouds. I had actually done quite a bit of local processing to bring out the cloud details that had been lost in the exposure. It's a matter of taste on where to stop, this time I chose an interpretation close to what I saw.

If it weren't for the wind blasts, it would have been fun sitting there all morning just watching the clouds surge back an forth. They would swallow Hallet and then quickly retreat.

One nice thing about the B&W version is that the dead trees are not as obvious as in the color version. I really like the way that this B&W conversion brought out the details in the clouds and took away the bright blue sky in the color version that seems unnatural.

I'm glad you like the B&W version, Jim.

Regarding the blue sky, on my monitor it looks just as blue and saturated as it was. No polarizer was used. The friends that I hiked with commented several times that morning about the incredible blue sky.

But you do raise a point. Do others feel the blue sky is a distracting element? Should I consider cropping it out?

I am leaning toward the color version, even though the BW is pretty dramatic itself. Really like the clouds!