August 12, 2019; Northwest of Locarno, Switzerland. It was a dark and stormy day; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the valley (for it is in Italian Switzerland that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the water-logged photographer who struggled against the torrent.
But then, a break in the clouds, which was of benefit, for until that moment the day (photographically for me anyway — my dear wife had done far better) has been a wash.
As a fortnight and a half had gone by, I had been ready to reject the entire day’s effort as a complete loss, even after examining the sodden images again and again.
Until one stood out, and even that one had to be subjected to long but delicate effort to transform that which the camera had recorded into what I had environed. Many pixels’ lives were forever changed in the slow but inexorable process of transformation.
And so after much labor I present it to you thus, and beg your indulgence.
(Nikon D850, Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2.3; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
AMAGA Photography Blog 
All those pixels, changed but for the better. Very nice capture of the mood of the mountains, Michael. The motion of the clouds moving through the valley is well-implied.
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Thank you very much. I kept telling those pixels, “change is good.”
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“Believe me, this is for your own good. You’ll thank me later.”
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Pickaboo in the Alps. Can’t ask for a better set up. Not convinced that the limited visibility (too dark) of the foreground is helping the composition.
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Thank you very much. I think I agree with you on the foreground. This is a little bit of a work in progress.
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dear; I printed a picture of you and I would like to ask you for permission to design it as a setting for my illustration for “the Dog and the Baby”. What do you think about it? if it is published, it will be my duty to indicate what inspired it
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Thank you very much. It would be my honor. I love “The Dog and the Baby.”
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grazie!!! grazie infinite! allora inizio subito l’illustrazione! many thanks Michael
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Beautiful image, Michael, I love those two steep spurs coming in from the left ; and the way the cloud lies on the landscape; and the very restricted colour palette. A 🙂
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Thank you very much, sir. The conditions were spectacular and changing by the minute. This is one of many shots, but probably the one that worked best in terms of overall balance. I think I agree with Oliver that the foreground is a little darker than it needs to be. I may revise the image and re-post it.
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I must be psychic: as soon as I saw this post’s title but before I read your first sentence, I thought of the line “It was a dark and stormy night.” What I didn’t know until I read the Wikipedia article about those words just now, was that Bulwer-Lytton gets credit for “the pen is mightier than the sword”, “the great unwashed”, and “the almighty dollar”.
The feature in the photograph that drew my eyes right away was the little concave-down arc of white in the center. Does that stand out for you, too? Is the faint bit of reddish color in some of the rocks on the left side of the image real, or an artifact of WordPress or the Internet or my imagination?
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Your psychic. By the way, I think he would really enjoy the Bulwer-Lytton literary contest. You can find it on a quick Google search. Yes, the arc Drew my eye to.
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I hit the reply button too soon. The arc drew my eye too. I actually deemphasized it slightly. The reddish color is real. I reduced the saturation quite a bit on this for a moody look. But I did allow some color to remain.
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Very dramatic scene, a bit spooky in a nice way. I think Mary Shelley started writing “Frankenstein” during a visit to Switzerland, during a spell of bad weather.
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Thank you very much. It is a bit spooky. As I’ve said to others. I may revise this and repost it. It may be slightly less spooky then. Not sure about Mary Shelley without researching it, but it sounds plausible.
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And behold the beauty hidden…
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Thank you very much.
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This is an argument for bad weather, isn’t it? But I’m left wondering what it was your wife was doing that went so much better. It’s tagged monochrome but I see color in there, and a comment reply above confirms it – those subtle colors, so nice.
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I was exhausted that day. She wasn’t. I tagged it monochrome but this is in fact made up of many colors. Thank you.
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I was exhausted – she wasn’t – 🙂 :-)!! I get it!
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