Winter landscapes

Moving Pictures

I'm not a landscape photog, by any stretch of the imagination. My niche is sports, so it's a break for me to capture things that don't move ...

Yesterday started out blue and white and green and perfect. And then the clouds came in, providing a challenging uniform greyness to the whole thing. I played around anyhow, just to try and capture some elements I don't often work with.





Wanted to pull out some light for this little green lichen. Background was same light as foreground: backed off exposure by a stop and change, fired up the flash, upped its output by a stop. Still didn't achieve what I was after ...



Was tempted to pull the curves on this, but there really wasn't a ton of light in the area, so this is basically right off the camera, untouched.



Most times, when shooting snow (hey, I'm Canadian, it's what we do), I simply set the camera to overexpose by 2/3 of a stop ...

lifeinfocus

Like #1
I like the softness in number one. Number four is nice - would like it more if the bottom was cropped off a little.

I live in Michigan and we are finally into winter - about a month later than normal.

Phil

kdog

Very nice scenes, Moving Pictures, although they are a bit gray. Try setting the white point and I believe these will really pop.

Moving Pictures

Good thought on the white point. I had the WB to "cloudy" - I generally only fart with white balance in really messed-up lighting situations.

I threw a bit of processing at it.... I don't have photoshop at home, so used GIMP. Think there's too much colour now.

artfotogriff

I like the first shot a lot. I'd probably Photoshop out the telephone / power lines though, but all in all a good effort.

Moving Pictures

artfotogriff wrote: »

I like the first shot a lot. I'd probably Photoshop out the telephone / power lines though, but all in all a good effort.

I was fully aware of the power lines, but I gotta letcha know I'm a newspaper guy, and by nature way on the don't-screw-with-it side of the photoshop bellcurve for that reason. I'll curve/level and maybe tweak for tone, but that's about it.

PS: composing more effectively would have required either thicker ice on the river, or suicidal tendencies ...

Doug Solis

Ole Kdog knows his stuff. Love your reprocessed shot. I'd do them all.

Snowgirl

Wow, first I found another Maritimer from Halifax posting on here, and now one from my own province of New Brunswick! Welcome!

Landscape photography can be a lot of fun and very satisfying artistically as well. I'm a family and pet portraiture photographer most of the time, but I love to get out and about and shoot our beautiful province. I never really understood why they changed the slogan from "Canada's Picture Province" to whatever-the-h it is now.

It seems like every covered bridge, no matter how picturesque, has bloody power lines running along it in ways that make it impossible to avoid when shooting. IF I were doing up that 1st scene for printing, I would PS the lines out of there. But for the fun and exercise of the the shot and exposure/composition purposes? Nah. Just remember, landscape photography is mostly for art so it's ok to alter the image unlike journalistic purposes (snicker).

I like the edited version of the fourth shot - although I might have pulled it back just a titch.

BTW, most people find it helpful to number each image in a post so others can comment specifically on particular shots.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Moving Pictures

Snowgirl wrote: »

Wow, first I found another Maritimer from Halifax posting on here, and now one from my own province of New Brunswick! Welcome!]
It seems like every covered bridge, no matter how picturesque, has bloody power lines running along it in ways that make it impossible to avoid when shooting. IF I were doing up that 1st scene for printing, I would PS the lines out of there.

Noted. There's a story about this and other bridges on the Digdegaush River. You'll see the sides kinda cut out - that was a move made about a year and change ago, during the floods. DOT crews feared the bridge would be lost if they didn't allow some of the water to go through the bridge. Yeah, the water level was that high.

Thanks for the push. My problem for the last decade or so, has been that I leave my "big camera" at home when I take trips. After all, if I've got the "big camera" it's like I'm working right? Then again, I've had a great pleasure capturing some interesting images with a $150 point-and-shoot, which we use as our motorbike-trip camera.

dls

I quite love #1. It has a softness in tone that I find quite appealing. And between the original and the reprocessed photo, I would certainly favor the original. Not certain if tweaking the curves a little more in lightroom might make it pop a little more.