ice & snow

[Dennis Bishop]

Not to worry -- the southern shore of Lake Erie doesn't look like this yet. After a long summer without Photoshop, I've returned to working on images pretty much chronologically. This one was taken in March of this year. My limited personal observation and old photos I've seen of teams of horses pulling sleds laden with ice back to the shore on the way to an ice house, indicate that Lake Erie is commonly at least partially frozen in the winter. It's more interesting visually when large plates of ice are washed shore-ward, but seeing snowmobile tracks in the snow covering the ice catches my attention, too.





iPhone 5s, Pure camera app, iPro Super Wide auxiliary lens, ISO 50, 3-exposure HDR at 2 EV intervals

processing highlights

• The processed HDR was flipped horizontally for composition and transformed in Warp mode to rotate the curved horizon.
• At the bottom of the layer stack are two layers with the same Belle Fleur texture. The first was heavily blurred; Multiply blend mode with reduced opacity was used on the second. The edges of the combination were revealed with a partial gradient mask on a layer near the top of the layer stack.
• The base image was achieved chiefly with Topaz Simplify, Alien Skin Snap Art, Fractalius, and a deep yellow Photo Filter adjustment layer.
• Depth was added with masked Curves and Hue/Saturation layers, and masked blurring.
• The sun rays were added with Digital Film Tools' Rays, Red Giant's Knoll Light Factory, and Alien Skin's Eye Candy Backlight.
• The cracking is from a new Flypaper Textures collection.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dennis, it's good to see you back posting again and I can appreciate your working in chronological order Vintage Dennis - wonderful treatment, esp. the cracking. I see that you used the warp tool to rotate the curved horizon so I'm assuming that it was curved to begin with? I was wondering what your thought process was on having the vignette heavier on the left side - I know there's a reason and I like the way you did it.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I see that you used the warp tool to rotate the curved horizon so I'm assuming that it was curved to begin with? I was wondering what your thought process was on having the vignette heavier on the left side - I know there's a reason and I like the way you did it.

While eating breakfast this morning, I wished I'd better explained the need for the rotation and the fact that a simple rotation wouldn't cut it. The iPhone has a pretty wide-angled lens to begin with, and that's compounded by using the Super Wide iPro auxiliary lens. That and probably my position and the way I held the phone resulted in a curved horizon. Especially with the curved snowmobile tracks, that didn't bother me at all, but the phone wasn't level, and that left the intersection of the horizon and the edge of the frame noticeable higher on one side than the other. Almost always, I prefer using Warp in Free Transform rather than the faster solution of straightening with the Crop tool because the latter removes more of what's in the frame.

The difference in the vignette wasn't intentional but I thought it turned out okay. The texture I used had a lighter upper right corner which worked well with the location of the sun. The lower left, as I remember, was one of the darkest regions. Normally, I just use a black gradient for a vignette, so it's even all the way around. When possible, I like to have some kind of stopper on the right side to keep the viewer's eyes in the image. That would usually be an argument against having the right side of the vignette lighter. However, in this case, that timber brings the eyes back toward the lower left, so it's good to have a dark edge there. It's nice when things work out that way. (Later today, we're heading back to the spot where this was taken. It'll be a short visit, but I'm going to walk down to the shore and see the words that were hidden by the snow.)

[Anita Bower]

I like the warped horizon. It works nicely with the snowmobile tracks. Thanks for explaining the horizon in your response to Cheryl. Of course, I like your processing. The words on the end of the timber is a nice touch.
The whole image seems a bit dark. I brightened it a bit using Brightness/Contrast and Levels, and prefer it brighter--not a lot, just a bit to give it a bit of a glow. I think the vignetting adds to the darkness, and I would prefer it without the vignette.
Interesting texture. I went looking for Flypaper textures as I'd forgotten about them. Thanks for mentioning it.

[Nancy Bell]

Glad you are back, Dennis! I like the 2 separate diagonals that lead my eye back to the curved horizon. On one side I wonder about the snow mobile tracks and the distant expansiveness of the ice & snow. On the other side I want to know more about the "dog swim..." message. The curved horizon holds these 2 directions together. The crackle texture is a good addition for the icy feel but I would consider making it less visible in the blue sky area.

[Mitch Carucci]

I also like the balance of the snow mobile track. Great processing as usual. Ice and snow simplifies a scene allowing the lines of the horizon, tracks and lumber to stand out. (Any idea of what Dogs Swim means?)

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

Greetings. Particularly like the cracking and the sun rays. Thought the tracks were a shoreline. Dogs before, Swim after... huh. Thanks for posting this engaging image.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

If you're one of those wondering about the rest of the "DOGS SWIM BEFORE/AFTER," stay tuned. We got back from there about an hour ago. I took hundreds of photos including one on Saturday showing the scene without snow & ice and, therefore, with all the words showing. Hopefully I'll get at least that one downloaded and posted in this thread tomorrow.

Thanks for your comments. Anita, I wondered about lightening it. Actually, the original is lighter than what showed up here.

[Dennis Bishop]

Except for tone-mapping of bracketed shots, a bit of straightening, and minor color adjustment, this is how the scene looked on Saturday. This was shot with an iPhone 5s and no auxiliary lens. I guess I was pointed pretty much west this time and northwest in March. This was taken not too long after a morning of rain, so it's not just the lake that's wet.

Behind me and slightly to my right is a long dock where steamboats used to pull up to bring people to the community. There is now a sandy beach and swimming area for kids and another swimming area (both in Lake Erie) for everyone. They're on the west side of the dock. People are on the dock all day and line up in the evening to enjoy some incredible sunsets. Fishing is pretty much confined to the north end of the dock. I don't think I've ever seen dogs swimming on this side, but it's not uncommon to see them on the east side just swimming or fetching sticks thrown out into the water by their owners. Sailing hours are pretty much irrelevant close to the shore on that side of the dock.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks for explanation of dogs!

[Dennis Bishop]

Normally when I use a Levels adjustment layer, I'll adjust the sliders on the composite of the RGB channels. During lunch, I was reading about Levels and decided it was worth seeing what happened if I adjusted the red, green, and blue channels separately. For this image, the difference wasn't remarkable, but I've decided it's a good way to go. I made a few other adjustments, too. You're right, Anita, it looks better brighter.

[Anita Bower]

Dennis: Yes, I like the second version better.

I use the levels composite slider on all my photos. Sometimes I also use the individual color sliders. Hope they work for you.