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Lens-Artists Challenge #282 – Dramatic

The Lighthouse at Puerto Plata.

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

This week it’s Patti’s turn to challenge us, and she leads the challenge to the dramatic. Patti noted, “This week, we’re asking the question: what makes a photo dramatic? Maybe it is processed in black and white, or it has vivid colors. Maybe a person, place, or object is captured from a unique perspective or it is a macro shot.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

The easy choice for dramatic images is to include dramatic skies. For my response, I am probably including too many sky images, so sue me. >grin< The sky at Puerto Plata truly reflected the golden hour timing of our arrival at port. The old lighthouse was a convenient subject.

Panoramic view of a coming storm.

I am a big fan of panoramic images. This shot was captured in Montana at Fort Peck Lake. The storm would soon drive me inside, but not before I was able to capture a couple of cell phone images to piece together in Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Cabrillo Coast, California.

This is my last dramatic sky image for the challenge, I promise. I actually reworked this image specifically for the challenge. No, I didn’t play with the colors in that beautiful sky. The original image featured a guard rail at the very bottom of the photo. I captured the shot from the back seat of a moving vehicle. I used Adobe’s Generative Fill function to remove the guard rail and create the imaginary base of the image. The area below that rock cropping on the left is imaginary.

Mary Poppins.

At Trollwood Performing Arts School a summer outdoor performance of Mary Poppins is my example of a dramatic stage scene. OK, maybe Mary Poppins isn’t a drama. Trollwood’s high school production is one of my favorite summertime activities. The outdoor theater is a beautiful venue.

Diorama at the Lincoln Presidential Library.

Black-and-white photography can be useful in adding drama to a scene, however, the majority of the drama in this diorama is from the application of spotlights in strategic places. The abomination of slavery is a scourge on humanity that still exists in our world.

The Lady in a Red Dress.

The portrait above is the result of my experimentation with creating composite images. The lady is a model captured with the background removed. I used layering techniques in Luminar Neo to provide a background and lighting effects. The image of the lady was downloaded from a royalty-free site. To comply with their free license requirements, I am providing a link for more information here.

For those who like to pixel peep, you can find 2K HD versions of this gallery on my Flickr site here. Thanks to Patti for this week’s Dramatic challenge. Next week, Ann-Christine hosts. If you’d like to join in the challenges but aren’t sure how to get started, click on the link here.

John Steiner

45 comments

  2. Informative as well as colourful, John, and they may be ‘easy’ but I like your skies best. There’s nothing quite like the drama of nature rolling across the sky.

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  4. Unique slant on this challenge John. I loved the landscapes, but I think the true drama here is your technical abilities. This is evident in the “Lady in Red” image. And thanks for sourcing the model.

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  9. Wow John. I could have enjoyed pages of your sky images. True, the sky and light bring outstanding drama where we want it. I was actually glad you included Mary Poppins, Theater, is drama. The diorama…powerful in SO many ways.Thank you for always sharing your “know how”. My favorite today was the lighthouse in the feature. Hope the weather in the east hasn’t held you up too much.

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  11. All very dramatic, John, and of course I love the sky shots. But the Mary Poppins one is the most unique. Fun! The lighthouse is wonderful also, but I sort of counted that as a sky photo. 🙂

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  15. Great drama, John! The skies, the lady in red…wonderful. It was a clever idea to include dramatic performances, too. I also used Generative Fill in my racehorse image–to remove the guard rail in the foreground. It’s an amazing tool, don’t you think?

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    • I am always surprised how well the tool works. Since Luminar Neo has added Gen-Erase and Gen-Swap, I’ve added those tools as well. They don’t give me the three options that Photoshop does, but if I don’t like the first attempt, I just select it again and I get a different choice.
      It really works great to remove unwanted objects from scenery. One upcoming photo in a future post is missing a trash receptacle that found its way into one of my scenes. >grin<

      Reply

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