Challenging myself

timk519

A few days ago my area got about 2" of snow, and in the middle of the snowfall I took my Rebel XT and 17-55/2.8 IS lens out to shoot the local park's snowfall - winterscape

What I came back with is 300 of the most challenging shots I've ever taken - the sky was overcast, the snow covered everything and didn't leave much detail behind, I had to position myself when shooting so the falling snow wouldn't get in the lens, and the resulting light wasn't nearly what I would've preferred. But that's what 2.8's are for, no? :wink

I shot in Av, at f/10 in order to get a good DOF. Post-processing's been a challenge, so I thought I'd toss one of the pics up here for some helpful suggestions from my fellow grinners. What would you do with this image?

MarkR

Living in Rochester, NY I have experienced a lot of the same frustrations you have.

My workaround, in general, is to convert to black and white or sepia tone. It really shows off the tonal contrast of the snow with the rest of the picture, and you can fiddle with the contrast without having to worry about messing up the colors.

jdryan3

Any chance you used a card for White Balance? I checked the data on a couple of the shots (I followed the link to your site) and they state you used a manual WB. Exposure mode was auto and EV was 0, so it seems no EC at +1.5 to +2 was done? While it seems that some of the images have a typical gray cast when under exposing snow, others have the snow blown out (the lower left of the cannon).

What kind of metering were you using? If you were using Evaluative, it gave you a nice average gray. You should have probably metered for the brighter snow areas (again the lower left of the cannon, bottom of the statue), since it seems your shadows have plenty of detail.

If you shot in RAW, adjust your WB with the WB tool. Set the exposure and black points. Then do some selective curves adjustments to give the whole thing a little more pop: the statue, the evergreen, maybe the building in the background. By selective, I mean use ctrl + eyedropper when in curves and lift those points.

Those are just some quick thoughts. Hopefully some of the better winter photog experts will chime in here.

pathfinder

Tim,

Shooting dark trees covered in white snow can be challenging. The scenes can be very appealing to ones eye, and yet the images often seem less vivid than we remember actually seeing them...

There are a number of factors that come to play here - one is color balance, what color is snow on a gray day, another is how to manage the limited contrast range of our image compared to the extreme contrast range these scenes offer in real life.

Getting the exposure correct can also be challenging to a reflective light meter, like those in our DSLRs. An incidental light meter does much better in this environment, because it is not trying to meter on a neutral 18% gray card. -- I discussed this here a while back. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30235&highlight=sunny+pathfinder


A few links about the color of snow and post processing snow images might be of interest also

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=6366&highlight=rutt+snow

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=5586&highlight=rutt+snow

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=5674&highlight=rutt+snow

Duffy Pratt

I love these winter scapes. And this is a very nice shot. Whether to up the contrast on a shot like this is a matter of taste. The low contrast, bleak look can be perfectly appropriate.

I took a shot at this one and did up the contrast quite a bit. I worked in LAB. I added a black point and brightened it some. Then on a different curve layer, I wrote very steep curves in the A and B channels to increase color contrast, and dialed that back to taste on the opacity. Then to further bump the colors some, I did a high radius, low amount sharpen on the A and B channels. Finally, I did a pretty stong adjustment on the highlights with the shadow/highlights filter to put some depth into the trees and to grey the sky some more.

Duffy

Sam

Here is quick levels adjustment.

edgework

Tricky image. I darkened the quartertones, then ran Shadow/Highlight with a high amount and small range to pull back the detail in the three-quarter tones. A few other embellishments, but no global solution here. The next level would be to create some sophisticated masks for the snow to bring out the detail that's in there. a bit more work, but maybe worth it.

Edit: that's what i did, actually, with the hill in front and the footprints to the left.

timk519

Thanks for all the responses and edits!
I'd like to thank everyone for their responses and the proposed edits. It looks like I've got a lot of learning to do. I think from the comments, the main challenge to taking pictures like this is in bringing out the snow's features given the lack of contrast it can have, and figuring out what to do with the image given the wide variety of options possible results one can get.

I've addressed all your responses in the order you posted them.

The Hobbyist: A B&W conversion? I hadn't considered that one. Thanks for the idea!

jdryan3: Ok, true confession time, I used some snow for the WB on some of the images, then when I saw what the histogram looked like I believe I went to the "shade" setting. I then fiddled with WB during post-processing in Lightroom in order to try and get some of the snow's detail to come out. I didn't think to use EC - truth be told it was so overcast I didn't think it would be necessary. Now I know better.

pathfinder: Thanks for your remarks! I'll read your posts with great interest.

Duffy Pratt: I tried upping the contrast on some of the scenes, and the general result was that any detail in the snow was lost or diminished, and any color the trees had turned more black. Your changes brought out the footprints under the statue and in front of the cannon, but appears to've dimished the "whiteness" of most of the snow. I'm guessing it's not possible to have both "whiteness" and detail in this picture, but maybe if I put some EC in the next time I do a snow scene, and I can have my white and details too.

From your comments, there's lots I could be doing with LR that I'm not doing now, so I've got more learning to do there.

Sam: To me, your adjustment looks much like when I pushed the blacks in my original image. Is that what you did here?

edgework: Your changes have an almost "this is a negative" feel to it. It's certainly a valid artistic expression I hadn't considered, and something for me to keep in mind for the future.

timk519

Ok, here's another try
There were some more pics on the CF card that I hadn't pulled off. Remembering the comment about exposure compensation, instead of dropping the contrast and raising the brightness, I dropped the brightness and pushed the contrast.

The result - pictures that actually look like what I remember on my hike - dark, foreboding, with everything covered in white.

I'm sure the colors aren't quite right with my monitors being out of calibration, but the feeling seems there.