The storm clouds cometh

[ucci]

On my way home on a country road saw these clouds gathering, just happened to have my camera with me and thought, why not! Hardest part was finding somewhere safe to pull up on what is a narrow but very busy highway between Seymour and Yea. Any C&C would be most gratefully received, thank you.
Thanks to all who took the time to view.
Ken

[Donald]

Don't like the second one - but that's just me!

Viewed in the lightbox and at the larger size, the third one is a cracker. Very dramatic. All mood and atmosphere.

I think the first one has potential as well, but am wondering if a good sweep with a dodging brush (our however you guys with fancy Photo shop stuff do dodging) along the trees, thus lightening them up a bit, would help it. The land beyond is fine.

[ktuli]

I actually was thinking that the first could use the trees to be cropped out, and 2 and 3 could use more of the hills cropped back in. But that's just me.

- Bill

[Donald]

I actually was thinking that the first could use the trees to be cropped out, and 2 and 3 could use more of the hills cropped back in. But that's just me.

Yep - Didn't see that. That would work.

[JohnC]

First off Ken,-you've photographed an excellent storm development - you should have got a thunderstorm,they're Cumulonimbus -what happened ? Here's a suggestion to save having a tripod with you at all times but helping to get a sharp image-carry a bean bag and sit the camera on it on the roof of your car-hope it's not a large 4 X 4 in which case carry a small step-ladder too Sometimes I'll rest my beanbag on a fence post or the like .

I can't agree on the cropping suggestion gentlemen. When you get clouds like this context really matters- ie. the Earth-Sky link, which I think I've mentioned when I've posted some of mine and is,I believe, important in most photos like this but there are times when you just want to show the hard edged cauliflower tops of storm clouds or maybe sunset colouring and just the cloud image is fine but generally with photos like this having landscape included enhances them.

My thoughts are that cropping the hills in photos 2 & 3 would leave a slither of them and I really think that it just wouldn't look right and with reference to cropping the trees from photo 1, you'd have to crop to above those two trees on the right side because leaving them would draw the eye and cropping them out would leave an unbalanced image in relation to the hills and the clouds. I'd be going with your suggestion Donald, in your first post, ie. to lighten up those trees, it's a far better option than cropping them out so I've had a go at that as well as using the grad filter (LR3) on the storm and the sky above it .I suppose I should also say 'but that's me' because of the subjective nature of a pleasing image but generally there's a common denominator.

Here's my effort.

[Bobobird]

Nice captures there Ken. I like 1 and 3.

John's edit is an excellent alternative which shows off the main subject very well.

[ucci]

Thank you to all who commented and passed on some very helpful advice and useful tips. Your help and support is very much appreciated.
I like your improvement John. I felt the trees and hills were needed to give some idea of the perspective and size of the clouds rolling in. However I agree 2 and 3 could be improved by perhaps a tad more of the hills included without losing any of the cloud formation. And John, apart from a bit of rain the storm turned out to be a bit of a fizzer!

Ken