* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #816 / Revived #036 on 2023 12 06 *

Thanks for the comments, Mike.

Here's a few thoughts about brightness of snow photography.

First general thing,..
If you normally rely soley on the exposure meter in the camera, and there is a lot of white in the scene, then as usual the camera will take some sort of average measurement of the scene brightness and place that average at a 18% grey level. So the image would look way too dark.

The cure here is to use the live histogram as a guide and simply adjust the Exposure Control until the image is brighter. Like using the ETTR method. (or just add some positive EC)

Next is to look at the scene itself and decide how much brighter that should be. There are loads of different types of snow. If the sun is shining and it's glittering there is a huge dynamic range in that scene. Some of the small ice crystals can, by chance,  be perfectly oriented to make very bright specular reflections.  Just moving your head a little will cause completely different chrystals to sparkle.

In number 1 If you want to keep those sparkles in the image then the rest of the snow has to be dark enough to let the sparkles stand out. The darker it is the more the image will "sparkle". It's a judgement thing how much that should be for any particular image.

The second shot has the sun behind me and it also sparkles, but a bit less. I adjusted the brightness to show a nice sunny day with pure "white" snow, but even so, to see the snow texture, some parts of the snow have to be less white. It probably also looks brighter overall because of the bright sky and clouds. Also those deep tractor tracks are in the sun in number 2 while in number 1, looking in the other direction, the walls of those same tracks are in deep shadow.

They are in reality two different pictures and it's probably best to only display one of them at a time ;-)

In number 4 a large part of the snow is in shadow, but that area still looks much brighter than the almost black tree trunk. The highlights in the image are the sun star and the snow falling down in the tiny avalanche, catching the light as it falls. Those highlight areas  are, and have to be, brighter than the main part of shadowy snow areas, to stand out.

Generally it's all coming under the topic of the "impression of light"

... if I were to make those shadow areas much brighter (like with aggressive HDR) you'd lose the impression that they are in shadow and lose a bit of the 3D effect in the image.

Thanks for that. I'm not surprised. I can see that working with snow is going to be a very different thing and it is way outside my experience.

So much for the wonders of auto-exposure! 😀

David

Thanks for your thoughts! I think you have a point there. 👍

I have 60 hours more training and 20 hours more testing left this month, hopefully the instructors don't take off the last two weeks of the year. But after all that I can get back to trying to improve.
In the mean time, a few different things I've tried over the last few years.

This was an edit of the bird images, a not so difficult, where waldo idea.

I just liked this image and in post I tried to make it into a early color photo feel.

The address board and older store fronts I thought could make this one seem like something shot in the 80s so I tried to get it in camera but ended up editing for color and to crop out some thing.

This statue is so prominent when looking around here, I thought this image showed how it holds your attention.

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Off to my next test, 4-midnight.. I'm sleeping in tomorrow...

Excellent pair of images that take the viewer right into the midst of the action, with all the gritty detail and intensity. The colors are rich and reminiscent of film photography. Use of light and shadow is well controlled and effective.

This is lovely. I immediately thought of Vermeer: portrait of a woman with an enigmatic expression, performing a mundane task in carefully rendered lighting with limited but carefully selected background elements. The sweetness of her expression is somewhat at odds with the grisly task of hacking off chicken feet , but that incongruity is part of the story. Excellent image.

Quite a nice series. I seldom see snow so I appreciate nice captures like this. The last two are my favorites, the leaf because of the exquisite color and detail (including the sparkly stuff) and the final one because of the explosive POOF of snow you caught in its spontaneous action, much like I caught the floating curtain in my submission this week. Such captures illustrate movement by implication: rather than recording the movement, we cause the viewer to feel it.

I like the color combo here, of browns and cyans, and the details down the center of the leaf. I do think a little less exposure, or perhaps a polarizing filter, might have kept detail in those highlight areas where stuff looks a bit blown.

A beautiful beach sunset with some wonderful underlighting on the clouds. Beautiful colors.The human figures enjoying a late swim add an extra element of interest but it would be just as good without them, only different. I might be tempted to reduce the number of figures and see how that looked, but again, that would make it a different picture, not necessarily worse or better. The natural elements well captured are what makes the image's appeal.

Simple statement in color(s), with perfect balance and a touch of rhythm.

A sucker for fog, I find this image very appealing. It has a mysterious Lord Of The Rings look to it, with the muted colors, overlapping mountains, lush exotic looking plant life, and those rolling banks of fog. Very nice.

What an intriguing abstract! I'm quite curious as to what it might be, The colors are only of minor consequence here. I think it would be just as appealing in monochrome, because the real attraction here is the sinuous series of lines that weave across the field of view form left to upper right, occasionally overlapping. It has a very musical feel. Mesmerizing.

I see Mike's reply but I don't see the original post of the image??? It is too intriguing to pass up so I will comment anyway. It's a compelling portrait, and I agree with Mike about the titling. It holds too much mystery to tie it to any specific prompt. The way you've used degrees of blur is very powerful, drawing the viewer in on the blue crystal of that one slightly less OOF eye. Excellent, very engaging work.

Love the "where's Waldo" image.

My favorite of the lower three is that snow image which I think is superb. It has a Norman Rockwell village feel to it, a classic winter scene with colorful signs, leading lines with a lone figure as punctuation, balanced geometry and wonderful falling snow. Excellent piece of work.

I remember the famous photographs and your title is perfect. Well spotted and interpreted. The names have left the building.
The chairs have something of the shape of big men with presence, an elbow on each arm rest and a cigar in the hand. Something like cafe chairs wouldn't have carried the same significance.

In photographic terms, it isn't great. But what it has in bucket loads is atmosphere, in all senses of the word. It feels heavy and it feels damp. Semi tropical rain forest on a day the trees will love. Lots of trees, lots of cloud, lots of trees viewed through cloud, No hint of sun coming through. Soak it up.

We might be above the surface looking down, we might be below the surface looking up, we might be thinking of wave patterns on a beach. It flows in somewhat unpredictable ways.
However it strikes you, it suggests something of the nature of water. I like abstracts that can seize the essence of something and trigger responses as this photo does.