Hi John,
I love the days when the snow clings to everything! I think this images either needs a bit more contrast or playing around with some adjustment layers to provide more depth and drama as right now, the brightest sky areas are drawing my eye! Let's see how others feel.
Hi John, Agree those days can be magical with the snow clinging to the trees and it usually doesn't last that long.
I love how the black branches almost look like veins running through the snow. The image is a bit flat and as Roman suggested either more contrast or an adjustment that will create depth. Good eye on this...
Thanks guys. It was the dark branches in the FG that caught my eye (and Dave's!)- I was essentially under a tree looking out. I see what you mean about flatness but I find most images I make like this look flat and disappointing in relation to what I saw with the naked eye. I guess this is the challenge- to produce an image with depth in these situations. I'll keep working on it, I have a lot to learn! I'll play with the contrast in the image a bit as I may have some room on the highlight side (the dark branches are close to blocked black I think).
I like the scene and the overall feel. I agree that eh snow on the dark branches needs a bit of brightening and the sky showing through needs to be toned down a bit.
Since you are in shade looking out, the sky will be brighter then the underside of the snow. I don't see a way to lower the bright sky without it looking un-natural. I suggest increasing contrast to make the dark branch to bright snow stand out more.
In the repost I used a curves adjustment and the high contrast preset in PSCS3. I then did a local contrast enhancement on a BG copy using USM at 20/50/0. I cropped off the bottom as the branches are smaller there and do not support the larger/thicker ones in the top 4/5 of the image.