The sky and the landscape were quite dramatic as a snow storm started to clear. Since the trees were very dark green, I thought b&w might work well and I could try some ideas that Gary Phillips showed me recently. If you look at the darker areas of the sky, there’s lots of stippling (noise), that isn’t there in the color file. Using Lightroom, I haven’t found a way to reduce that noise…
5D3, 24-105 @ 40mm, f/16, 1/250 s, iso 200, tripod
Pretty early winter scene. I would be tempted to mask off everything except the sky and really pull in the white point and somewhat the black point to make the snow white, popping the contrast quite bit. I am finding it very gray and flat. The sky looks about right. As said, a real nice scene.
The clearing storm makes for dramatic conditions and your photo captures that well. I do agree with Harley about brightening the highlights in the snow. The shadows look about right to my eye though.
I think this looks pretty damn nice, Mark. The sky is always a tough deal as any noise tends to get amplified. I’m currently working on an image that is in it’s 6th or 7th iteration and I can’t seem to get it right. I think the black point is close to there. The lake is spot on. I do agree that the whites could be boosted. I like it, and I’m happy to see you experimenting with b/w. I use Define 2 , which is part of the Nik Suite of products for noise reduction. I think it does a pretty good job. My old Mark 2 was really noisey, I’m wondering if you warmed this prior to conversion. The blue channel holds the most noise and bringing those numbers down tends to help.
Mark, really liking this composition. For me it has that leading our eye(s) view through the FG right up to the top peak. That view leaves a person wanting to take out hiking toward that peak.
I think the B&W treatment is excellent. As suggested there are some ideas for change. I can’t say I see the noise in the sky, but I also use the NIK Define 2 as Gary suggests. However, when it comes to sky areas noise can be seen as an acceptable area by some folks to be a bit of grain like with film usage in that part of a scene…
