Winter Teton Monochrome

[steve torna]

Last week I traveled to GTNP for wildlife and I had only one morning of cloud free skies so I decided to try a landscape utilizing a buck rail fence as a means of leading to the mountains. Well, color never really developed. I was imagining orange or purple light that might bathe the snow and the landscape but the light fizzled out and I was left with blue sky and some highlighted clouds. To me the color version was uninspiring so I converted to black and white. I am anxious to see if anyone likes it at all. Canon 5D III, 17-40mm @ 40mm, Lee 3 stop GND filter, RRS tripod and cable release, ISO 100, 1/5 second @ f/22, February 12, 2016 @ 7:35 am.

[Glennie Passier]

Steve, it looks like some kind farmer has built this fence with the notion it would make for a great image. The fence itself is interesting...as are the beautiful mountains. It maybe my old eyes, but I feel there is some shadowing and haloing around the posts. I know you would have thought about the composition carefully, but WDYT about taking a slice off the bottom?

Just beautiful Steve. Thank you for sharing!

[steve torna]

Thanks Glennie, you have great eyes because I did sloppy work at using my LR paintbrush to bring up exposure on the fence posts. I like your suggestion to crop the bottom, much better; not so empty. Great eyes thanks steve

[Don Railton]

Hi Steve

I like your idea of making this a B&W but I feel it has a few problems you could address... The thing that hit me first is the room above the clouds... there just isn't any... and the clouds feel cramped into the frame I feel (you could add a bit of canvas here to fix and pinch a bit off one cloud to add to the one you clipped..). Glennie has pointed out with his old eyes the shadows around the posts, my old eyes can see it as well, even in the RP. I also agree with a crop off the bottom but I would take it up further, to the bottom of the fence. Turn it into a pano.. Finally there is one little stalk bottom LH corner that is an attention seeker, I think attention seeking stalks should be discouraged with the cloning brush in this instance. So after all that, I love the fence, the mountains and the idea behind the image...

regards

DON

[steve torna]

Thanks for the suggestions and agree with all of them; I did reverse the exposure brush on the fence when I reposted and I don't see the halo. What is causing the halo and where do you see it? I certainly don't want to present images that have halos or ghosting. thanks Don

[Don Railton]

Hi Steve

Look at the areas shown circled in red and further along the fence..

DON

[steve torna]

I see it now, what causes the halo?

[Diane Miller]

Lovely scene. I like the crop off the bottom but you need the tops of those clouds to be contained in the frame.

Look back at your processing steps to find where the halos came in. Try Nik's Detail Extractor for bringing up the fenceposts.

[Don Railton]

I see it now, what causes the halo? Hard to be definite about what you did wrong because I dont know what you did exactly, but its commonly due to imprecise/sloppy masking where the mask bleeds over an edge and includes some of the area you did not want to change. As Diane suggests, you need to review what you did... I notice its around your signature also so that's another clue for you.

DON

[steve torna]

Thanks Don, I discovered that using NIK software Tonal contrast without control points was causing the problem. I was using it to bring out more detail in the snow. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and taking the time to critique; this has been a great lesson in composition and post processing.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Steve, I like the repost the tonal values look really nice and the image has a nice depth to it.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Nicely composed and I also think a small crop from the bottom. I too wish there was some space above the clouds. Sounds like you figured out that with the U-Point Technology in the Nik Software that you need to carefully check surrounding areas for unwanted effects :)