I like this. Your composition is very pleasing and I think this works very well as a black and white image. The only thing I would consider would be to brighten the image a little bit. I feel the foreground could be a bit brighter and some of the darks in the trees feel a bit too blocked up.
Hi Simon, Thanks for sharing this preview of what many of us will be experiencing for weather in the coming weeks… Exposure of snowy scenes is often a challenge for even the best metering systems! Given a snowy scene the meter makes the snow middle grey, clearly not what the eye experiences. Getting it right in camera by increasing the exposure compensation (without blowing the highlights!) will make post processing easier. But given what you have captured, this is what I see: The sky/clouds look pretty good the way they are so I’d leave them alone. The basic tree line might be slightly dark, but the shadows are too heavy so masking the tree area and bringing down the blacks and shadows sliders should help open them to where you want them. The snow in the foreground should be masked and lifted with the whites and highlights sliders. I think local correction in these two areas will help bring the image to where you were intending.
Thank you for the tips. I will play around with the trees for sure.
I bracketed 5 shots on this one so I have some room to wiggle.
I did bring exposure up the foreground a bit, but I think you are right and will try to push it further. It might be what is missing to me. I will try printing them too and see if I notice anything different there.
Alright here are some of the adjustments. I brought the foreground back up on exposure, but i did bring the temperature down to keep contrast high. I felt like it gave the flat snow more of an edge.
I also gave more exposure to the trees, which also helped.
Hi Simon,
Your rework is getting you closer to where you want to be. The sky looks great and the shadows on the trees looks much better. For my tastes I could see the whites of the snow brightened a little more as they still look a bit grey. I hope you do not mind, but here is a rework with what I was thinking. Just my opinion of course.BTW this is a wonderful scene and a perfect candidate for a B&W.
Wonderful composition and the right choice going B&W. However I think you might have gone a bit too bright on the ice on the lake, well mostly on the log sticking out of the lake, The ice on top seems blown out to me. I would hold the ice back on the log while brightening the rest. Something like this.
