Photo of Venue Cymru, Llandudno

Clouds and Buildings #1

Venue Cymru on the East Shore promenade at Llandudno on the North Wales coast with wispy cirrus clouds overhead

The story behind this image

The quality of sky can make or break an outdoor photo.

Imagine this view of Venue Cymru on the East Shore promenade at Llandudno without the fantastic wispy cirrus clouds overhead - it just wouldn't work would it?

I love it when there are dramatic clouds available to include in a photographic composition, to the extent that I'll make the clouds the main part of the image and let the foregroud land just act as an anchor at the bottom of the frame.

This is how I approached this photo, with heavy emphasis on the sky.

Of course, pointing a wide angled lens upwards at this sort of angle is a recipe for distortion, which is what happened to the vertical streetlights, and to a lesser extent the buildings themselves.

I considered, and even had a go at, removing the distortion in PhotoShop, but I didn't like the end result which looked too manipulated for my taste. So I left the distortion in, using the inward bending lines to focus attention onto the clouds which were, after all, the reason I took this photo in the first place.

Image data

Filename - clouds buildings 01.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm

Exposure - 1/30sec @ f11, ISO100

Location - Llandudno, North Wales

This image - 800x533px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - Polarising filter used to enhance cloud contrast