The Photo

Something a little different.

This shot was taken in a really heavy rainstorm. I was taking shelter and having lunch, but could see the rain and the water in the air creating a separation between the different hills in the serra.
This scene was a long way away, and only a tiny portion of the landscape that I could see infront of me. The telephoto lens has compressed the hills to such an extent that the foreground trees are perhaps 3 km away from me, whilst the tress in the mid-ground are around 7 km away
I don't expect this to get much attention here on DA, it's just not that kind of shot, but I'm happy with it. I really enjoy shooting more "intimate" landscapes with a telephoto lens and the possibilties for composition that come with this kind of focal length. In this case, I wanted to create a shot that really felt like a water colour painting, and captured the slightly colourless feel of the landscape in a rainstorm.

Technique

Conditions were changing so fast, and it was raining so hard that I didn't have time for the tripod.
I used the lens hood to keep water off the front element, and handheld the camera. I opened up the aperture to keep the shutter time down, and turned on the VR to help keep the shot steady and sharp.
With the zoom fully extended I looked around the landscape, looking for arrangements that would give me as many receding layers as possible, and also hopefully have some sort of focal point to anchor the shot (in this case the two lone trees on the hillside).

Location [link]

Post Processing

Shot in RAW, I just cropped a little off the bottom to make the trees there less of a solid block, and to try to balance them with the others hills in the distance.
Resized and sharpened for the web.

Metadata

Taken near Casais, Serra do Monchique Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 80-400 VR ED
1/125 second | f5.6 | 400mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and Photoshop CS3