Winter Wonderland

[Yuukon]

I'm a big lover of winter and tons of snow, which is why I was so happy living in Finland! Since I don't live there anymore, I have to make due with these images and memories. I shot this in January near Helsinki. I hope you guys will like this shot!

[DanK]

A pretty and restful scene, but the image looks unnaturally blue to me. Without a neutral card, it's hard to figure out by how much, as snow under some lighting conditions does look somewhat blue, and simply turning the snow pure white in this image is too much. It gives the image a weird sepia tone. I tried warming it a little, using the bark of the trees on the left as a guide to avoid going too far. If you use Lightroom, it looks to me like 10 or so toward yellow is more natural.

Personally, I would open up the tones a bit by dropping the black point, add a bit of contrast, and add a bit of clarity. The results of a very fast and not very good edit that shows the directions I am suggesting is this:

[Shadowman]

Nicely composed and nice use of the tread marks as leading lines.

[Yuukon]

Nicely composed and nice use of the tread marks as leading lines.

Thank you John!

[Yuukon]

A pretty and restful scene, but the image looks unnaturally blue to me. Without a neutral card, it's hard to figure out by how much, as snow under some lighting conditions does look somewhat blue, and simply turning the snow pure white in this image is too much. It gives the image a weird sepia tone. I tried warming it a little, using the bark of the trees on the left as a guide to avoid going too far. If you use Lightroom, it looks to me like 10 or so toward yellow is more natural.

Personally, I would open up the tones a bit by dropping the black point, add a bit of contrast, and add a bit of clarity. The results of a very fast and not very good edit that shows the directions I am suggesting is this:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Dan! The blue is there on purpose, however. I like working with this to create a bit of an atmosphere, and blue often has a calming effect. Without the blue, I find that the details kind of fade and the tree-line gets a bit too busy on my eyes. Your version was what I started with to decide if there should be something more or not. In the original shot of this photo, there already was a hint of blue there because I was very early that day- before sunrise.

[FootLoose]

I don't live in snowy climes so I have no experience of how the light in a snow-burdened scene might look. But in many photos I see of such scenes there is a bluish quality to the light. If I accept all that is written in these forums about such scenes then that is totally wrong. But I still wonder if the quality of light varies with the time of day and at certain times it might actually produce a bluish tinge?

[Manfred M]

I don't live in snowy climes so I have no experience of how the light in a snow-burdened scene might look. But in many photos I see of such scenes there is a bluish quality to the light. If I accept all that is written in these forums about such scenes then that is totally wrong. But I still wonder if the quality of light varies with the time of day and at certain times it might actually produce a bluish tinge?

The bluish coloured snow is generally seen under open, blue sky conditions and is nothing more than the colour of the sky reflecting from the snow. One of my favourite ways of shooting a winter snow scape is at golden hour on a cloudless day when the sun rakes across the landscape. The areas hit by the direct sunlight are warm and have warm tones (primarily yellows and orange) while the areas in shade have blue tones.

Freshly fallen snow is white so when shot on an overcast day like this one, the snow is white or light gray. This shot looks like it has been deliberately toned.

[FootLoose]

One of my favourite ways of shooting a winter snow scape is at golden hour on a cloudless day when the sun rakes across the landscape. The areas hit by the direct sunlight are warm and have warm tones (primarily yellows and orange) while the areas in shade have blue tones.

Then the blue hour might also produce bluish tones, too?

[Manfred M]

Then the blue hour might also produce bluish tones, too?

Yes. Think of snow as a giant white reflector. It picks up the colour of the light that hits it.

Here is a scene shot getting toward the end of golden hour in the middle of winter. One can see the warm tones where the direct sunlight hits and the blue shaded areas.

[chaman]

Yes. Think of snow as a giant white reflector. It picks up the colour of the light that hits it.

Here is a scene shot getting toward the end of golden hour in the middle of winter. One can see the warm tones where the direct sunlight hits and the blue shaded areas.

In that example I would turn the blue down selectively on the snowy areas.

[Manfred M]

In that example I would turn the blue down selectively on the snowy areas.

This is a SOOC jpeg to show what this looks like. The yellow / orange and the blue areas are what the scene really looked like. Why would I necessarily want to change this?

[chaman]

This is a SOOC jpeg to show what this looks like. The yellow / orange and the blue areas are what the scene really looked like. Why would I necessarily want to change this?

Because it looks too blue IMO. Just a personal preference. The other areas I have no issue with.

[Manfred M]

Because it looks too blue IMO. Just a personal preference. The other areas I have no issue with.

Visit this part of the world in the middle of winter, during Golden Hour, with a nice blue sky like the one in the picture, the scene definitely looks natural.

It is a mixed light scene with colour temperature ranging from around 3000K (sunlight near the horizon) at one end to over 10000K (reflected light from the sky) at the other. Wait a few more minutes and the whole scene looks blue as the sun dips below the horizon.

[Yuukon]

Seeing some discussions around the blue tones, and thought I'd chip in too.
The original of this photograph was shot just before sunrise, during the blue hour. It had a very heavy blue tone, which I have de-saturated quite a lot for the end result that I presented here. I can understand the blue feels unnatural, but as Manfred said, the giant curtain of snow is a huge reflector of the light it catches, and thus producing different colours. Our eyes like to see snow white, and we can turn it to white easily, but the magic of the moment in which the scene was captured is something very important to me, which is why I always try to keep a hold of that in my end result. In the original, the blue was almost as blue as in the example Manfred has provided above.
With snow pictures, I always turn them back to white to see what it looks like, but if the original tone creates an atmosphere that works better, it should stay. But those are just my thoughts.