I've been thinking about Stieglitz's "Equivalents" lately. I never thought them particularly interesting, but I have decided now that I was putting them into the wrong context. I knew that most early film photography was orthochromatic, but I had never thought about what the implications were beyond movie stars having to wear what would with modern films have been ludicrous makeup. Stieglitz was the first (or almost the first) to use panchromatic film to photograph clouds after some years of unsuccessfully trying to do that with ortho films. He also disassociated his clouds from landscapes or anything else that would provide context, making them more abstract.
This supported my contention that significant artistic evolution almost always is preceded by significant technological advances. I know I take different pictures depending on which camera/lens/film/digital combination I'm using.
These three (all uncropped) were taken within a few seconds of one another following the airplane (it is relatively small even though these were shot at 300mm.) The post-processing was not exactly the same among them. I suppose I was evaluating how much was too much.
One thing I discovered was that my 75-300 AF-Nikkor has some innate vignetting which exhibited itself here as being brown. I'm not sure if that is unique to this particular lens or if it is normal for this design.
The second one is my favorite! Great National-Geographic-styled colors! In the meantime, what I noticed is a GREAT amount of clarity added in all three photos, and from my experience with cloudscapes, you probably could lower the clarity a bit and increase the contrast, which also helps enhance the sharpness. And by the way, a little film grain would make stuff look even better! Not sure I could help, but I see great potential in these photos!