White House up in the Clouds

Opportunity, timing and position are well know cornerstones in capturing fleeting moments. Sometimes it's even a suggestion.

While sitting on the patio in San Miguel de Allende my wife suggested that I photograph a white house on the cliff-side that was surrounded by clouds.

When I first looked up it didn't look that interesting but after getting the camera out and setting it up, the above cloud formation moved in creating a striking visual effect. The columns and rounded domes of the house are re-enforced by similar but looser structures in the cloud.

 original image out of camera

The original image looks interesting but is a little flat and static.
The changes I made were to add clarity +87 to increase contrast of clouds and house, increase highlights +60 to make the clouds and house even brighter and reduce both luminance and saturation of the blues and cyans in camera RAW.

In Photoshop, I decreased the saturation and luminance of the greens and oranges to keep mainly 2 dominant colors of white and blue.

Adding contrast to the clouds almost make them appear to explode around the house.

Niels Henriksen