The Aspen Glow Blues

[maddogmurph]

Climbing up from Virginia Lakes in 20 inches of new snow was a difficult and cold task.  Putting on wet boots that freeze, and stomping around in the snow at 11,000 feet elevation to get a decent vantage point was somewhat difficult, but I was lucky as the wind died down to a whisper during sunset and the atmosphere was bearable to capture quite a few shots.  It was a cold night, and took me a couple hours to warm up when we finally got back into our sleeping bags (laid out on a partial snow cave we dug).

[NancyP]

I like the pink snow, I have seen lighting like this. Congratulations, that is a very good photo.

[Paulo Bizarro]

I like how the colour of the snow changes from warm to cool on the opposing sides of the mountain. I agree with the foreground remarks.

[maddogmurph]

In colour, I seem to lose separation between the foreground rectangle boulder and the middle distance rocks; in B&W I seem better able to see separation between the rectangle and the middle distance.

Yes I agree, I was having trouble placing why I don't love this image.  It's the giant rock, which both creates the image and destroys it at the same time.  Without it I wouldn't have the cool/warm side by side.  I think perhaps If I had set up a tripod at like 7 feet looking more down I could have rectified the overwhelming rock.  I guess this is a mistake to learn from.

[John Poirier]

Hope you don't mind- I borrowed the image and did a bit of work on it.  I like the pic but some things weren't quite working for me.

Here's what I did:

-straightened horizon
-cropped
-burned in foreground rocks- midtones overall, shadows as well on largest foreground bolder.  Burning in was graduated from heavier at bottom of rocks to slight  at top.
-burned in highlights of pink snow at left, light area in sky at upper left, and partly illuminated trees center right.

The intent of the burning in was to subtly pull the picture together by toning down competing bright areas.  I was visualizing it as a fairly large print- maybe 24 inches across.  Hope you find this helpful.

[maddogmurph]

Thanks for working it a little bit, gave me some ideas for working my photo's going forward which is always appreciated.  I pushed this pup way beyond where it was supposed to go, mostly as a test.  Here is the original unaltered converted from raw.  Obviously doesn't carry anywhere near the zing of the other, but you can see it's also much better on the balancing.  I'm still trying to decide where to go with it over all, whether I prefer it pushed or as shot.  I think there's a happy medium somewhere so I'll have to work a bit more at finding that center balance.