Arrived at dawn to find overcast and freezing cold, note ice on the water. With no color in the sky, I went for B&W. Shot as an HDR to get more range. Very little further adjustments. Suggestions for how it could have been done better or further PS work that might improve the imagine desired. I'm looking to explore B&W more, so your suggestion are most helpful.
I like the mood and the detail in the trees against the spot of light in the sky.
You could do with a lot less of the foreground ice--I'd crop just below the little strip of open water. If you have some in the original capture, leaving in more sky would be preferable to having a lot of foreground. I don't know what you have to either side, but the trees/island could be smaller and surrounded by gray, giving more of a sense of cold and isolation.
Hey JB,
I like the idea of the crop....as the FG doesn't have that much detail and this will further emphasize the tree line in which you have nice seperation. You may try a bit of curves adjustment to bring out more detail in the sky. I really feel that B&W's need as much tonal range as possible....so tweaking this a bit in PP'ing some more may help bring more of it out.
I vote for the crop but the repost seems to be a little too contrasty and it removes some of the peacefulness of the moment. There is a little dust spot on the left side in the sky.
The top of the small trees end at the horizon line. There is always a trade-off between this and the reflection.
I vote for the crop but the original processing. Very nice scene. Im interested to know what a single processed shot would look like. I personally can't see this scene benefiting from HDR.
Paul, This is the Non-HDR. I liked the glow that the HDR gave to the area behind the trees. Also, I did the HDR conversion to the color version, and it looked quite a bit different and better in my opinion. Then I decided to go B&W. I probably could have worked with the original properly exposed shot in B&W just fine.
(Maybe its my monitor, but the post looks very splotchy compared to the file I uploaded.)
Hey JB,
I forgot to add.....after seeing the 1 shot image......the 3 stop grad ND would have worked nicely. Would have made the scene more like the re-post below. I should have been cleaner with my multiplied layers on the sky......but you get the idea.