Dark days

[billtils]

A friend from the US visited us late February/early March this year and this scene was shot at 4:30 pm during the obligatory visit to Glencoe and the surrounding area.

It's well ouitside of my photographic comfort zone but C&C more than welcome!

[mugge]

I would start by opening up the shadows. When that is done I think you will get a better view. Then the fun start.
Cheers Ole

[billtils]

Thanks Ole - I'll give that a go and see how it comes out.

Bill

[DanK]

I agree.

Here's the histogram:



Many of the details, including some I would consider important, are nearly obscured. For example, it's very hard to distinguish the trees from the are above them.

[Wavelength]

That is a very nice work!!!

[Manfred M]

+1 to Ole and Dan's comments. Yes, the details of those trees needs to come out. The ACR / Lightroom shadows slider pushed to the right would definitely open up those details.

Being a B&W white image, I would push both ends of the histogram so that they just get into the pure black and pure white; you have a touch of room at both ends of your histogram.

[xpatUSA]

Out of interest, Bill, I tried the GIMP's Mantiuk 2006 tone-mapping on it:



"Adapt an image, which may have a high dynamic range, for presentation using a [lower] dynamic range. This operator constrains contrasts across multiple spatial frequencies, producing luminance within the range 0.0-1.0"

http://gegl.org/operations/gegl-mantiuk06.html

Obviously, a little further work would be desirable ...

[billtils]

That is a very nice work!!!

Thanks Nandakumar - glad you like it!

[billtils]

Dan, Manfred and Ted

Thanks for your comments. Before responding, here's the original NEF more or less as it left LR to go on its PS adventures:




As I said, it's not exaclty in my comfort zone, but it was one of only 2 or 3 shot on the day that grabbed me and it was the dark, moody sky and parts of the mountains, with the light patches in the clouds and the snow capping that did the trick.

I used luminosity masking in PS to explore those dark areas that you mention, and selectively bring out some details and I'm happy tp go back and try pushing it a bit more but I would very much like to keep the "darkness" to contrast with the snow and clouds. Probably my approach is best summarised as I didn't greatly like what is in those dark areas and it's going to be a trial and error to bring out just a little more but not lose the drama.

Once I hit the brick wall with Dark Days it will be this one's turn.

[billtils]

Here is a version edited to take account of the comments:






It's not quite what I waas aiming at but I do agree that the edits suggested by all of you have improved things.

Thanks!

[xpatUSA]

I have to admit that it's a fascinating capture to play with, Bill.

Looking at your later and nicer posts, my GIMP play was way too light. So maybe this would be more to your taste:



This time, used G'MIC "Pop Shadows" which was still too light, so cranked down the gamma in FastStone Viewer which re-dramatized the darks and the lights. Sometimes lowering the gamma in grayscale shots can pay dividends ...

[Manfred M]

Here is a version edited to take account of the comments:




It's not quite what I waas aiming at but I do agree that the edits suggested by all of you have improved things.

Thanks!

Nicely done Bill. This version is much stronger than what you started out with.

[billtils]

I have to admit that it's a fascinating capture to play with, Bill.

Looking at your later and nicer posts, my GIMP play was way too light. So maybe this would be more to your taste:

Thanks Ted - nice work and indeed it is more to my taste. Indeed the only obvious difference between the two is that I had cloned in some brighter water texture at the right hand end of the loch in this edit.

[billtils]

Thanks Manfred