A Winter Tale

[Boti]

Hello everyone,

Here's a Winter black-and-white landscape shot.

Thanks in advance for critiques.

Boti

[luxborealis]

Wonderful image with very good composition and some great landscape elements.

I always find that on a bright sunny day as shown, the snow is quite brilliant and lively, even in the shadows. To preserve that feeling of brightness, try boosting the shadow values (in LR3 use Fill Light with, perhaps, some additional Blacks to preserve the black point; in LR4, try raising the Shadows adjustment).

[RSL]

Wow! Brrrrr.... A fine shot, Boti. The light's wonderful. I can't agree with Terry. There's a good black point in the trees toward the back of the picture, and if you mess with the midtones in the foreground you're going to kill them. Leave it alone. It's excellent just as is. Of course, there's a caveat that goes with that advice: Landscape, unlike street or photojournalism, depends strongly on the quality of the image rather than the significance of its contents, so it's really impossible to judge a landscape at 72ppi on a computer screen. In landscape the print is the thing. Make a test print and see what you think.

[Chairman Bill]

The foreground snow looks grey (a criticism once directed at some of my snow-scenes). Unless in shade, it should be white.

[sdwilsonsct]

Among other things, I like how the shadows at the bottom keep the eye inside the frame. Nice composition.
Non-white snow is fine with me, there is a lot of variation out there.
Scott

[RSL]

Bill, the foreground snow is very slightly gray, but look farther back at the highlights. There are places back there where the snow is nearly blown. Bring the image down onto your computer and load it into ACR. If you try to raise the tones globally you'll eliminate any detail in the cloud in the upper left immediately, and local mods easily can trash the whole thing. Overall, the range of brightnesses in this picture is almost flawless. As I pointed out earlier, though, printing is a different matter, and might require some further adjustments once paper white is in the picture.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... If you try to raise the tones globally you'll eliminate any detail in the cloud in the upper left...

Well, that's where Photoshop comes into play, where you can keep the cloud on a separate layer.

Oh, btw, I am the card-carrying member of the I-hate-gray-snow club Otherwise, it is a lovely capture.

[RSL]

You probably can do it, Slobodan, but it's not going to be as easy as it sounds.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

You probably can do it, Slobodan, but it's not going to be as easy as it sounds.

I agree that Slobodan can probably do it, but I probably couldn't.
I'd be tempted to wave my hand over the lower right part of the image under the enlarger ... Oops!   

[Boti]

Thanks all for your kind words.
I don't think I could whiten that snow either, I'm not that good with Photoshop. But will not keep me from trying

And I will definitely try and print it, to see how does it look as a "real" image.

Boti

[GlennMorimoto]

Great image, but I must agree with the others, I also prefer that the snow was whiter.