A cold wind came creeping down out of the northeast. It struck the Highline of Montana first. As is usually the case with such things, the day preceding the storm was strangely warm. Even if you hadn’t seen the forecast, you’d suspect that the warmth, although pleasant, was an ominous sign. As the deep pocket of Arctic air oozed across the northern plains and climbed up the east slopes of Glacier National Park’s most iconic peaks, it whipped up huge clouds of blowing snow. They raced right up to the top of the mountains and then kept going straight up as if gravity held no power over this force. Soon, the temps on the east side of the Park were well below zero. The terrain hugging cold struggled at first to make it through the passes and over the Continental Divide, but this mass of air out of the north was tenacious and determined. It came racing down the river valleys with an attitude of “I dare you to stop me” not unlike the trains that rumble down the tracks that follow the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. The mountains were swallowed in clouds of snow as the arctic blast now reached the open waters of Lake McDonald. The tranquil waters that so often mirror the clouds dancing on the peaks became rowdy with white-capped waves. Before long, three foot waves broke up the few areas of ice on the lake and tossed it violently onto the shore. Water sprayed off of the peaks of the waves and coated everything within its reach in layers upon layers of ice. These waves pounded the rocky shore adding to the spray. The super-cooled, airborne water froze nearly instantly upon everything it made contact with. Rocks, gravelly beaches, powdery snow, along with standing and fallen trees became encased in clear, sparkling ice. Alternating bands of snow and wind combined to make this place look exactly as you might expect a mountain lake to look like in February. A few days later and here we are, kneeling in rapt attention at the spectacle before us. The delicate pink sunrise on February 14th seemed appropriate. The calm water of a peaceful morning contrasted beautifully with the events of the storm that had visited here before us. With one tripod leg in the water, one on a rock and one on a shelf of ice, I vacillated between the need to absorb the truly inspiring scene with my Sweetheart and the need to capture the moment with my camera. With my precious Valentine by my side, we watched the color fade to gray. Soon another storm would be added yet more snow to the scene. The vibrancy of the moment may have dimmed from reality but it is etched forever into our memories.
Specific Feedback Requested
The color of the sunrise had largely faded by the time I captured this image. I have definitely modified the color in the sky. The general public has received this well, but I’m curious how obvious it is to experienced processors. General critique is always welcome
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
This is a panorama of 6 images, cropped to a 2:3 ratio. Each image was captured with a Nikon D850 and the Nikkor 18-35 3.5 - 4.5. The ISO was at 64, f/11, 13 sec, 25mm. I used a 6 stop ND filter to assist with the long exposure.
Hi Paul! Welcome to NPN! I’m new too as well as fairly new to photography, so I am not the one to come to for critique! At least not when it comes to landscapes and fancy post processing work. But I love your storytelling, I’m sure I’m not the only one who could feel like they were there! And this is a beautiful moment you captured. Bozeman, Mt, what a beautiful place you get to live in!
Processing is a personal preference so I won’t comment on that. I feel the rocks under the water are a much more interesting foreground element and I think I would have composed the shot without the ice. Also when composing a shot always look for merges. I would have raised your tripod a little so the ice didn’t merge with the shoreline and mountains. Also I think the ice is a little too dominant and overpowers the mountains. Just my personal opinions. And welcome to NPN.
Thank you for your advice Michael. I agree about the submerged rocks. I had meant to bring my waders on this trip but left them in the garage while I was packing! I should have tried a higher perspective. I tend to shoot low to the ground but I can see how not merging the ice with the shoreline might have helped. As I shot it I thought the ice mimicked the mountains in the background. I’ll tell ya one thing for sure, Lightroom does not like multiple horizontal lines interrupted by ice structures! I had a heck of a time merging this and other panoramas of this scene!
Welcome to NPN Paul, glad to have you aboard. Those are certainly unusual conditions to have ice covered rocks, and no ice on the lake itself. Unlike @Michael_Lowe, I actually prefer including the ice covered rocks, because they are so unusual. However, I agree with Mike that the merger of the rock with the mountains does create a distraction, and I wish you had tried to find a different shooting position where you could have eliminated the merger. Perhaps by moving to the right, if that was physically possible.
For a scene with light and colors like this in the sky, I personally think the processing looks a bit flat, and the colors are somewhat muddy looking, as a result. I think the highlights need more luminosity and contrast to restore some vitality. You have some empty space to the right of the histogram, simply pulling that in and using more of the tonal range would help. And adding a bit more midtone contrast as well. I could also see a slight crop from the bottom, I think it would balance the composition a bit . Here is a rework where I did a levels pull, added some midtones contrast using a TK Actions Midtones 1 luminosity mask, and the crop.
sorry but the upload of my rework is not working, I will circle back later, and attempt reloading it at another time.
Thanks Ed, that is some helpful advice. Moving to the right would have been great if I had remembered my waders! As it was I had the tripod in the water to get out as far as I dared. I look forward to seeing your take on it. I’ve got a ways to go yet to perfect my processing skills.
Paul, I am new to the site and this is my first comment. At first glance it looks great and your story telling is awesome. I’ve found over the years that my best approach to processing is to take my time in the field, understand the nature of things if you will. Sometimes the skies can be magnificent. Others they just aren’t and you’ll have to make due with what nature has offered us. On closer inspection of the photo I notice something going on in the left areas of the sky and even on the far right, a grey shade?! To me it doesn’t look natural. For Instagram/facebook this image will do great and I am certain you got lots of likes on which ever social media you use. I would suggest making very small adjustments in your post development phase. Great story and great photo, thanks for sharing.
I have been having issues posting a rework, but here it finally is.
For this I went into PS Levels, and pulled the right triangle over to the left to make more use of the full tonal range. I used TK Actions Luminosity Masks Midtones 2 to add some luminosity and contrast to the midtones, using a brightness/contrast adjustment layer. I then used a PS Color Balance layer to add Cyan (reduce Red), which I think results in purer looking snow, and less muddiness in the colors overall. And finally a crop from the bottom, to tidy up how that large rock exits the bottom frame edge.
Welcome Paul! That’s a grand scene; what a magnificent place to photograph, and what memories. Great comments above, and I really like what @Ed_McGuirk 's version added.
My only suggestion would be to add just a touch more color variation to the sky. Here in the Northwest we get a lot of relatively uniform colored sunrise/sunset color with our frequent overcasts, but I find it more common than not that there is still a little more variation. I’ll post a crude example of giving that a go with Ed’s version.
There’s a lot of posterization in the original posted version. I’m not sure where that was introduced (with six images from an 850 your original must be massive!), but I’d remove that in a printed version.
Thanks for the comments John. I do lots of over lap and then cropped to a 2:3 so it got a little smaller. In full resolution jpeg it is about 35 mp. The posterization is definitely related to the downsizing this site requires. Even resized to 2048 on the long side for Facebook, there is none of that. I took what you and others said and reworked it a bit. Here it is. I changed the crop to 16:9 because it shows more of the reflections.
