I took a trip to Acadia National Park last February, hoping to catch some snowy seascapes after a snowfall. I arrived the day after a snowstorm, but the day proved to be gloomy with a light rain. I instead set off into the nearby forest, and found this small frozen wetland area. This wasn’t what I had hoped to shoot on that trip, but i still liked how it turned out.
Any critique/comments are welcome.
I really like the contrast in this image. My eye also follows the trees deep into the frame. Do you have a lower angle image as well?
Thanks for the comments Ed. It was not possible to get lower due to a lot of unseen vegetation in the foreground that was on a small bank (I was on the top of this bank). I tried to get on the ice from another angle, but it wouldn’t hold my weight.
I really like this. Nice cold feel to it and nice depth. I played with it in B&W, but prefer the color version much more. Nice work.
This is a neat scene! I am especially drawn to the flatness of the ice and the smooth texture of the snow around the base of the trees. It looks like you did a good job of arranging the trees so they didn’t overlap or distract too much.
I played around a bit with this in photoshop, hope that’s ok with you.
What do you think?
I added a bit of vignette, but also applied an inverted darks luminosity mask to avoid making the already dark stuff too dark. I made it a little more blue with a curves layer in color blend mode. I made it brighter and very slightly more contrasty (it was too dark after the vignette). Lastly, I noticed just a little bit of yellow-browness in the lower lefthand corner that bothered me for some reason, so I did some color cloning of a nearby ice color. Something about yellow snow, you know?
Ed, this is really a unique find with the water on the ice and the snow bases at the trees. This comp does a great job of drawing the eye into the scene and then pulling it deeper into the foggy background. Also lots of interesting bits to study. One very minor nit, I am wondering if the yellow bleed into the ice near the first tree could be removed or lightened? Really a very nice winter woodland scene.
Glad there’s someone as O.C.D. about that as I am 
Ed, I really like this little scene. To me the higher angle is a good thing, because the bases of the tree clusters are more distinct that way. Brent and Alan offer interesting options about the tannin stains, but I personally find it interesting. The things particularly appealing to me are the clustered trunk areas against the milky white sheet ice, and the subtle reflections at the bottom. The little sapling and various understory help to make it very engaging little landscape. You don’t mention the techs so it’s hard to say. My only suggestion is either to move back just a bit, or zoom out, to include a little more room at left side to get a little breathing room on the far left bit of snow, which might allow more of the reflection over there as well.
@Bill_Leggett, @Alan_Kreyger, @Harley_Goldman, @Brent_Clark thank you for taking the time to comment on my image, I appreciate your thoughts .
@Brent_Clark, thank you for re-working the image, I’m very happy to see what others would do with the same image, it’s part of what I really like about NPN. I like the cooler WB you used here. In fact I recently posted another winter scene and got the same comment that I had warmed it up too much. I’m going to have to be more aware of cooling down snow/ice as a creative choice. I like the added contrast and vignette, except I think the vignette has darkened the background fog a little too much, I would prefer to see the fog a little lighter (but i like what your changes do to the rest of the image).
@Bill_Leggett, yes the yellow stains are from tannin, I think I like having them in my original warmer post, but if I decide to use Brent’s cooler WB in a rework, I would probably clone them away.
Good eye to spot this pattern and make a picture from it. You’ve not a nice alignment and separation with the elements. I think I prefer this to the rework below. The soft light feels right here.
Hi Ed,
To bad about the Arcadia trip, that’s a long trip to get skunked. Did they close the access roads due to the snowstorm ?
I am an easterner for most my life and get to take a lot of these types shots. You handled the separation very well as well as the near to far.
One thing I usually check is to see if my shadows have too much color in them. That is different than testing for color cast. I dropped a few color sample points on your image shadows and can see RGB color swings +7/-4. One penalty with shooting digital is color in shadows. The amount in this image is very slight. However if you run TKV6, darks1-dark4=, then select adjustment hue/saturation and open properties and color pick the shadows, it’ll pick red, then adjust down the saturation and brightness to taste. Without much effort I was able to align the RGB shadows values in zone 3 to +1/-2 and target a specific tonal range.
@Tony_Kuyper, thank you for your comments. I’m going back and forth on the cooler vs. warmer treatment, there are aspects of each that appeal to me. On this morning, the light drizzly rain on top of snow was creating ground fog, and I liked the warmer rendition which retained more of the light and soft mood that was present that day.
@Ed_Fritz - I’ve lived in New England my entire life, and love shooting forest scenes. There are certainly plenty of opportunities to practice that here 
I live a 5 hours drive from Acadia, so not such a long trip for me. I only got skunked this first morning, later in the trip I had more snow followed by some nice sunrises, so I got the Acadia shoreline with snow. The Ocean Drive road from Sand Beach to Otter Cliffs is frequently closed due to icy conditions, but you can always hike in.
Me too. But overall, the warmer is better.
There’s an excellent comp off the right side of the central tree as well.
Ed,
This is wonderful! Quite a unique find and setup The milky ice and snow-covered base of the trees makes this quite unique.
I didn’t notice until my second visit - the very subtle reflections in the ice. Wow, very cool.
I think Brent’s edits are spot on.
Beautifully seen and captured.
Lon
Thanks Lon. The reflections are caused by the fact that there was a light rain adding a thin layer of water on top of the ice. In the interest of full disclosure, I never saw the reflections either until after I got back home and saw the image on my computer…
