I know nothing of photography and own a point and shoot camera that I use only on auto. A couple of years ago I started experimenting with taking photos through fog, mist, and smoke in order for the resulting image to seem more like a painting than a photograph. I took a series of shots in Scotland that captured what I wanted but I failed to preserve them in any real way so they are probably lost now. I don't often get the type of weather conditions required for what I want as Tasmania has amazingly clean air, but yesterday we had a bushfire in the highlands above me and I managed to get one shot at the right time for the shadows to be the way I wanted them.


I figured someone here may appreciate my efforts to make a photograph look like a cheap thrift store 1940's print of a mediocre painting.

Lola, I believe one of the most important steps you can take to grow as a photographer, is to ask others about their sincere opinions, so I'm delighted that you are doing just that. Seeing your own photos through other peoples eyes and to humbly absorb and contemplate their suggestions can be extremely helpful.

This is very different from simply putting your images on display, expecting everyone's unconditional praise, which sadly is the most common approach today.

I love that you have a goal for what you want to create, and the patience to wait for the desired shooting conditions. A lot of the time the only difference between a great photo and a mediocre one, is that the photographer had the patience to wait for the right conditions, be it light or smoke from a bushfire.

My favorite part of the photo are the bluish hills and the trees in the middle section. They look super and as a result the photo has a beautiful atmosphere, which I believe is what you wanted to create here.

I do think you could have gotten a little more out of the sky, so I want to see if I can help you to achieve that in the future. Sometimes it can be very hard to capture the whole dynamic range - from the bright sky and into the shadows - in a landscape and photographers were taking steps to achieve this even in the film days. This can become quite technical and include everything from old school gradient filters, dodging and burning, and to take multiple photos with different exposures to capture every detail in the sky and the shadows, and then combining them by hand or with automated HDR software.

My suggestion for you, is however as simple as playing around a little with manual exposure compensation as this is a great starting point. If your camera provides a histogram view of your images, it is ideal to check that the highlights and shadows of your photos aren't clipped. In this case only the highlights are clipped and a bit of negative exposure compensation could have revealed a little more detail in the skies, which would have made your picture even better in my opinion. It is very nice as is too, but we are here to learn from each other! If you don't know what a histogram is, you can see a good explanation here: https://photographylife.com/un...

William's suggestion about trying to get better detail in the sky is great. I can see clouds on the right, but there is not much definition.

"a cheap thrift store 1940's print of a mediocre painting". I think this defines it perfectly and I love the way you captured that effect in this photo. Cool idea to use the smoke to help with that. I have been to many antique stores and have seen paintings like this. Even though I have never bought one, I do love them for their nostalgic look.

Since you obviously like to experiment with taking pictures, I think one day you will want to check out what else your camera has to offer besides auto mode.

I like the way the trees look blurry around the edges like a watercolor . It adds a softness to the photo that makes me feel you have achieved your goal.

William - The sky in that shot disappeared into the smoke and I could barely make out any clouds although I knew they were there keeping the smoke in the valley. Sometimes the sky just isn't there, as in this shot taken during winter. After the long low clouds the sky disappears into the screen unless framed in black.


My favourite subject to photograph is clouds. I contribute to the Sandbox thread of 'Interesting Cloud Scenes' and I have posted a few shots there that I am very proud of. I have been trying to capture the skies that the artist J.M.W. Turner painted in the 1800s. They are on page 10 - Feb 21, page 12 - Mar 20 + Apr 1. I no longer have those shots so that thread is the only place they appear.

Lola, did you read the article I linked to? Obviously it is totally okay to capture a sky without any detail if this is what you really want to, but I can assure you that there are details there, even if the naked eye can't see them. The histogram of an image never lies and whenever the shadows or highlights are clipped, detail is lost.

Even though a lot of detail is lost, due to overexposure, the detail that is still there, can be made more visible simply by burning the area a bit, although the result won't be as good as if the image was taken with a darker exposure. To demonstrate this I repost your image with a few simple adjustments: