Prairie sunrise: Opinions needed

[tbob]

I shot this while waiting for another shot to hopefully develop with the sunrise on an old barn. This was behind me as I faced the barn. I usually look around for other stuff while just standing there freezing. The subtle light on the frosty and frozen meltwater puddle is what caught my eye. Plus the curve of the stubble.

I have spent some time fooling with it and now need honest opinions about whether it is worth further work I find myself being unable to detach enough to be impartial.

[flashback]

Trevor,
Overall I like this image. The horizon looks like it needs a bit of clockwise rotation and the snow is a bit too...blue. But the partial tree, curving windrows and distant horizon gives a great sense of isolation. Definitely a strong keeper.

[deetheturk]

Very nice Trevor,i'm with Jack,it needs just a slight clockwise turn!

David

[bnnrcn]

Nice image Trevor,I agree with the others about rotating

[Manfred M]

Blue snow? Methinks the white balance might be off a tad...

[bnnrcn]

Manfred, I asked the same thing in one of the threads in the past and I was told that the snow had blue colour very early in the morning and because I didn't see snow very much where I lived,I may not have known about the colour

Blue snow? Methinks the white balance might be off a tad...

[Wavelength]

Excellent image; the tilt, i think is a visual paradpx; if you scroll the image up or down until the horizon meets the screen limit, a thread of orange sky remains on the right side, which would mean a very slight rotation in anticlockwise direction....probably the confusion is an outcome of the deep orange brown segment near the horizon.....

Regards

[Manfred M]

Binnur - I live in a place that gets a lot of snow (an average of over 2m every winter), and it can take a blue cast in shadow (something we as humans tend not to notice, but the camera will pick up). This comes from a mixed light condition; at sunrise and sunset, the sunlight has to travel through a lot of atmosphere and tends to have a yellow to red colour, while the sky is quite blue.

Snow will reflect the colour of the blue sky, so like most shots taken at these times can have a blue cast to them. It really becomes the photographer's call as to how to handle this mixed light situation. Making the snow look more gray, while potentially more accurate, does not necessarily look particuarly nice in an image.

In this specific case, I find the amount of blue a bit too heavy handed / unnatural and backing off a bit might be worth looking at, but that would warm up the image and might not be the look Trevor is after.

[Geoff F]

Going by what you have in the way of an untrue horizon and the vertical line of the tree I would say the scene is perfectly level as it is now.

I did wonder about a slight crop from the bottom but I can't get anything better. So I would say this is a perfectly acceptable photo.

[tbob]

Blue snow? Methinks the white balance might be off a tad...

No it was just so cold that morning that the light was freezing and hence there was a doppler colour shift to the blue end of the spectrum as it slowed down. Sometimes in January we go outside and saw off a chunk of light and use it to light the house when it unfreezes.

[tbob]

Thanks for the confidence in the shot.

I will work on the blue to see if I can do anything to lighten it to a more appealing colour. The horizon I will revisit, should be an easy fix.

[Manfred M]

No it was just so cold that morning that the light was freezing and hence there was a doppler colour shift to the blue end of the spectrum as it slowed down. Sometimes in January we go outside and saw off a chunk of light and use it to light the house when it unfreezes.

And a lovely explanation that is...

I understand you have to thaw the frozen light quite carefully and under very well controlled conditions, otherwise it can cause serious colour casts and in extreme circumstances cause sunburn. I assume you have it stored in light-proof black containers to keep it fresh?

[Kaye Leggett]

I love the colours and shapes you have captured although find the bush on the left a little distracting.......

[tbob]

I love the colours and shapes you have captured although find the bush on the left a little distracting.......

Interesting Kaye. I cropped out the tree and it does simplify the image. I will mull over the result and see how I like it.

[Donald]

Interesting Kaye. I cropped out the tree and it does simplify the image. I will mull over the result and see how I like it.

Mmmm! Have you any spare pixels to the right? In other words, did you crop at the right hand side at all? I ask because if you were of a mind to crop at the left to take out that tree, it would throw more emphasis onto the curved lines of stubble. If you could take a bit more of those in to the picture, then it might increase that effect even more and, perhaps, strengthen the image further. Maybe?

I love the lines. Not only that created by the stubble in the field, but the snow line on the land just in front of the horizon, the horizon and then the cloud front. They work together beautifully to take you into and around the image.

[tbob]

Mmmm! Have you any spare pixels to the right? In other words, did you crop at the right hand side at all? I ask because if you were of a mind to crop at the left to take out that tree, it would throw more emphasis onto the curved lines of stubble. If you could take a bit more of those in to the picture, then it might increase that effect even more and, perhaps, strengthen the image further. Maybe?

I love the lines. Not only that created by the stubble in the field, but the snow line on the land just in front of the horizon, the horizon and then the cloud front. They work together beautifully to take you into and around the image.

Thank you Donald, it was the lines and the reflected light that caught my eye. I now wish I had shot a wider shot to get more to work with. Unfortunately this is the full file so I cannot get more to the right.


i fooled about with the blue. I may have to get a more comprehensive post processing program as Aperture only lets me do a few things and local colour amendment is not one. Changing the blue on the whole image dose weird things to the sky and clouds.

[purplehaze]

I may have to get a more comprehensive post processing program as Aperture only lets me do a few things and local colour amendment is not one. Changing the blue on the whole image dose weird things to the sky and clouds.

Hi Trevor,

I have Aperture and am thinking that, theoretically, you should be able to brush an adjustment onto the snow using the individual Red, Green and Blue channels on the Curves brick. Sorry I can't guide you as I haven't done enough of this sort of thing myself.

Otherwise, I just wanted to say I am really drawn to the line of stubble and the texture of the snow and I would be tempted to go back to that location under similar conditions and fill my frame with just that!

Edit: I've been playing with your image and there are three relatively easy selective adjustments you can use to reduce the blue cast:

1) Do a Natural Gray white balance on a mid-tone portion of the snow and brush the adjustment out of the sky. (I did not know before this evening that you could brush WB adjustments in and out, but it is in fact an option for Natural Gray and Skin Tone adjustments!)

2) Select a mid-tone portion of the snow with the Gray Tint dropper (Enhance brick) and brush the adjustment out of the sky.

3) Do an Auto Separate Curves adjustment and brush it out of the sky.

All of these adjustments can be refined or used in combination with each other to fine-tune the effect and you will of course get different results depending on where on the snow you place your eyedropper in 1 and 2.

Hope that helps.

[AB26]

Trevor,
If ever I see snow again I am going to Pre-set WB using the snow.

[Mike Buckley]

I may have to get a more comprehensive post processing program as Aperture only lets me do a few things and local colour amendment is not one.

Your images are consistently of such a high quality that you and they really do deserve the opportunity to take the images to a higher level when making selective adjustments is required to do that.

[tbob]

Hi Trevor,Hope that helps.

Thanks Kaye: I will get onto this tonight when i get to my home computer and can fool with it.

The boss at work is a real jerk and will no longer allow me to work on my images there. Since he is me; I have no recourse or appeal. The human resources guy is even worse, don't get me started on the IT department.