Early Winter Morning

I took this shot on one of the early morning during last winter. At first, I wasn’t even sure why I took it, but later on, during post-processing session I discovered a subtle nuances of light on the trees. Some of them were much more in the shadows, and others stood out and bathed in the light. In post I wanted to enhance this contrast between subdued light of the “sleeping” trees and the one “waking up” from the long winter.

Specific Feedback Requested

Colors are always hard for me - even with such subtle scene with next to none saturation. Composition and tonalities are also important factors for me when I post process my images.

Technical Details

image

Image was further cropped to meet 2:1 ratio

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Andrzej

You’re are bringing something nice and chilly to the critique session! Burrrrrrrrr :cold_face: I can feel the cold in this image!

Your composition is fine. I do see what you were saying with the colors. Early morning soft light like this and snow is a challenging mix in post. The snow can take on any color, and with any type of contrast adjustments it can throw the colors off. The first thing I would consider doing is darkening the background or the entire scene. This will put more emphasis on the foreground tree, and give the scene a more mystery. Next consideration would be to pull the some of the magenta out of the scene. The overall scene feels kinda purple. I would tackle that in ACR or LR by just adjusting the tint in the white balance. Shift more towards green. Lastly I would desaturate the blues and purples. You can adjust in ACR or LR with the HSL sliders. This will give the snow more of a neutral/white look. It’ll feel a lot more natural.

Sample image attached…again, just some thoughts.

Hope this gives you a better idea of what I was seeing.

DT

Hi David!

Thank you very much for your critique. I aimed for a slightly dreamy look and I might have gotten overboard with the colors. I’ve desaturated the blues & magentas, as you suggested, as well as pushed overall tint more to the greens. Although I think not as much as you did - I wonder if you still find image more on the purple side? As for contrast - I didn’t want to loose all the details in the deep shadows, so I lowered exposure and some highlights contrast everywhere else (with proper luminosity mask). This versions is closer to what you’ve proposed. Thank you once again! :slight_smile:

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Much better Andrzej! I would probably like to see this a little darker to bring that tree out some more :blush: but the edits do help out a lot here!

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