Momma taught me to never eat the yellow or gray snow. Uncle Ansel taught be how to render it accurately on a print
I realize tastes vary but if your are going to tone down the snow to gray and kill it\'s natural specularity putting a white border around the photo will make it more obvious the highlights are dishwater gray rock salt, not sparkling diamonds.
In my edit I pushed the highlights to clipping in the snow to get their natural Zone 10 specular value and then pulled the shadows, which were blocked, up to about 10 with output in Levels. Then I pasted the original with the blocked shadows over the top again and with a mask selectively darkened some shadows back down to 0. The net effect is a full 0 - 255 tonal range with more sparkle in the highlights and a bit more perceived detail in the shadows. The shadow detail is easier to see with a black mat vs. the adjacent glare of a white one.
Save the white mats for when you mount the photo on a white wall. The \"wall\" at FM is gray and the white mat becomes a distraction from the content.
In terms of composition I would have preferred to see the focus set in the circled area (with arrows added just to annoy Dougie )
That would pull and tend to hold the view in the \"core\" area of the photo. The sharpness in the lower right in the original pulls the eye away from center to that contrasting sharpness.
Feb 12, 2012 at 08:50 AM
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