Frosted Tree, Clearing Fog

[LenR]

This image captured on a foggy day in March. A lone hoar frosted tree in open grassland against a background of cottonwoods and conifers on a hillside.
Comments welcome as always.

Frosted Tree, Fog, Fish Creek 2 by Len Reeves, on Flickr

[Geoff F]

Looks OK but I wonder about cropping a little off the top. Perhaps reduce the sky by about half? Then, if you want to retain the same size ratio, a similar amount from the right side.

Would fractionally darker shadows be an improvement, or look too harsh?

[xpatUSA]

Nice! Even though I had read the title my first thought was an infra-red capture but then I saw the grass, duh ...

Wondering if it would be worth trying to bring out the frost. Frost close-up has those super-bright reflections which are perhaps subdued details at that distance. Must have a play if it's OK by you? ...

[LenR]

My thanks to Geoff & Ted, the image has been cropped in post. I am away from my editing PC at the moment but about 20% from top and left and about 10% from right. Image as captured is 30mb but may stand a little more cropping.
Ted I have increased the brightness/highlights of the frost on the tree by about 20% ( reads in the neighbourhood of 210/250 for the lighter areas) Tree is about 200 yards away from camera position and as you mention somewhat subdued by the fog.
Please feel free to play - will be interested to see what you come up with.
Cheers.

[xpatUSA]

... Ted I have increased the brightness/highlights of the frost on the tree by about 20% ( reads in the neighbourhood of 210/250 for the lighter areas) Tree is about 200 yards away from camera position and as you mention somewhat subdued by the fog.
Please feel free to play - will be interested to see what you come up with.
Cheers.

Ta!



I'm not overwhelmed, but here's what I did. I used a threshold function to turn the image into pure black and white with just the frosted bits as white; I deleted anything else that appeared as pure white but wasn't frost on the tree. That gave me a mask where I could edit only the "frosty bits". I then inverted the mask so as to be able to edit only the non-frosty bits.

Could have been better but at least the principle worked, eh?

[LenR]

Ted, cheers for that. Will "take a butchers" along those lines.