I've been doing a bit of experimentation in photographic snow scenes, and I am getting to a point where I am up against a bit of a wall when it comes to PP work. Here are my issues:
A. Snow is white and a great reflector. This creates two problems. It reduces shadow detail to the point where snow can look like a big. boring homogeneous mass of white. Boring images. We can play with our adjustments in PP to increase shadow detail; but this adds a grey overtone to the image. Snow should look white, not grey...
B. Our eyes are naturally drawn to the light parts of the image, which in a scene containing snow, it is rarely the subject matter. A classical way of focusing the viewers attention in this type of situation is to add a vignette; usually we tend to darken the corners of the image to draw the viewers eyes to the centre of the image. This tends to make the snowy areas look grey, and again our brains tell us snow is not grey...
Three examples of where I am coming from:
1. Out of the camera image with a tiny bit of sharpening and exposure adjustment - in my view this results in an image that needs some help as per points A and B above. Even here, there is an element of grey in the snow:
2. After a bit of PP work (mostly using the Nik Contrast Enhancer filter); I get to the issue I mentioned in Point A. I get more detail in the snow, but this means I have introduced more grey. While this introduces shadow detail, I find I am still not as focused on the subject as I would like.
3. Here is where I have introduced what I consider to be a fairly light vignette, but the effect is immenidate and the image takes on the grey overtones that says "not snow", but I do direct the viewers eyes to the subject.
So, are there any suggestions on alternative approaches that might give me a better image? I'm rather hiitting my head against the wall here. I suspect the problem may be difficult to solve as I really am trying to trade off two conflicting issues.