Spent a couple of days trying to photograph Vermont in winter - bitterly cold. As I was meandering through, I saw this and immediately pulled over
The sun started peeking through and with it the mist started lifting off the snow and ice
This is cropped 30-40 % but very minimally processed in LR - just wondering if needs anything
Specific Feedback Requested
Any mist / fog experts ?
Actually let see others imaginative thinking
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Handheld f/8 1/200 of a sec
Nice mood from the fog and a fine cold looking scene. I might clone out or crop down to eliminate the bright spot ULC but otherwise, processing looks good.
The fog adds an almost other-worldly feeling to this one Karl. The B&W treatment adds to the story of the starkness of winter. The lack of color boils this image down to shapes, lines and textures , which is very effective.
I love the view and the mist, and like the suggestions above. I also find the amount of detail in the water in the LL a little bit of a distraction. I also wondered about a little more structure in the mist. There wasn’t enough information in the JPEG to work with but here’s a quick attempt.
Fortunately I saved the PS layered file in case you asked. First I did a Tonal Contrast (in Nik CEP) and masked away all but the center. Then did a Camera Raw filter on the BG and did strong negative clarity and masked away all but the LL corner. (A much better way on the full file would be a lot of low-opacity cloning.) That was clumsy as I had to move this layer above the Tonal Contrast layer – should have done it first. Then I did a stamped copy of all the layers and did a Nik CEP Detail Extractor and masked out the LL, to keep the smoothness. Then a curves to increase contrast a little and masked that to the middle. I was fighting to keep the snow from blowing out too much. A lot could maybe be done in the raw stage, maybe with the new masking tools, and undoubtedly even more in PS with the TK panels.
