This was from one of my rare opportunities to photograph winter landscapes during a relatively snowless winter. After an overnight snowstorm, I drove to the summit of Kancamagus Pass in New Hampshire. The storm had just started to clear out at sunrise, and there was some pretty dramatic light and clouds, as well as some nice snow covered spruce trees.
I am particularly interested in receiving comments on the color of the sunlit snowy trees. In processing this image, Auto WB generated a WB of 4200, and I think it did a good job on the clouds and sky. I tried it at Daylight WB and the sunrise light on the snowy trees went way over the top yellow, and I decided to leave everything at auto WB. I didn’t want to take the trees any cooler either (to like a neutral white), because in real life the warm sunrise light on the snowy trees was very intense, and I didn’t want to lose too much of that.
I also have recently been experimenting with adding white borders to my posts here. But due to the yellowish snow, I though the white border did not work that well with this image, and went back to border-less for this one.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any and all comments are appreciated.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Canon 5D MKIV, Canon 70-200mm F4 lensa t 106mm. ISO 400 (due to wind), 1/20 sec at f16
The snow looks yellowish to me. It looks fine given the morning warm light, but I might experiment with pulling it out and comparing. Not sure what will look best. I am on the fence over the comp. I really like both the trees and sky, but I find myself wanting to see a lot more sky and cloud.
I agree with the others that the yellows have a lot of orange in them. I don’t think this is a problem per se but usually with warm clouds and snow the viewer has more of a hint of a sunrise or sunset happening in the scene. I feel that with the intimate nature of this scene subtlety whiter snow suits better.
I downloaded and neutralized the image in photoshop. Image-> Adjustments -> Match Color and then clicked ‘neutralize’ check box in the dialog box and the subtle changes worked for my taste.
Ed, I must confess. After trying to come with a bit whiter, lighter color for the trees ,using TK7 possibilities. I came out almost the same as you did. It’s a very difficult one to process I think.
Especially if you want to keep that sunlit color.
Admittedly this is not one of my stronger photos. However processing the white balance on this scene was proving to be very challenging. While I liked how the sky looked, I was struggling with the look of the snow. So I thought I would post it here to get some experienced pairs of eyes on this, and seek out opinions. This shot was taken literally 2 to 3 minutes after sunrise, as the light first hit the trees on the top of the mountain. I was trying to maintain some of that look, but was not happy with it. The fact that each of the four of you comes down the same way tells me the yellow/orange snow needs to be pulled back. Just for comparison here is the original post, the unedited raw file at As Shot WB (temp 4400), and Auto WB (temp 3850). Somewhere around 4000 will probably do the trick.
As you can see the posted image is more orange than the raw file (As Shot). I did not change color or WB, so that can only be due to darkening the snow and adding mid-tone contrast.
Ed, I am late on this one and having read all of the comments and reposts, I prefer the auto WB version or just a bit warmer. This was a good example of how much the WB does impact these type of scenes.
Thanks Alan. I was actually shocked how much relatively small changes in WB temp look so different, for most images that is not the case. Probably it’s more noticeable with whites.
I think part of what my eye is struggling with in the first image is that the brightest snow is whiter and the darker snow is more yellow; I would expect the opposite. (Typically the darker, more shaded snow moves blue in comparison to the brighter in my experience.) You might double check the individual channels to be sure one of the colors isn’t blown in the highlights.
Ed,
Snow, what is this thing you call snow! I usually prefer my images a bit on the warm side, but for some reason the auto WB version resonates better for me. I guess it is the old saying of do not eat the yellow snow. All kidding aside I am really enjoying the color combination of blue and white in this image. The addition of the cloud works nicely and does a nice job of complimenting the snow covered spruce. I hope you were able to catch a few more since snowfall has been so scarce this year. I think we might have had 1/2" here in MD where I live.
All kidding aside I am really enjoying the color combination of blue and white in this image. The addition of the cloud works nicely and does a nice job of complimenting the snow covered spruce. I hope you were able to catch a few more since snowfall has been so scarce this year. I think we might have had 1/2" here in MD where I live.