""Vineyard Oaks"

As always Mark, a well thought out and presented image. Great handling of the clouds to squeeze out every possible tone.

I almost gave up on you with all those colour shots;-) Seriously though, craftfull composition worked out in a very good b&w photo.

Beautiful photograph that has a lot of 'pop' as a black and white. Somehow the hole in the clouds reminds me of a large hawk or raven winging over the scene. Nice lead-in lines. Well done, Big Guy! Cheers! Chris

There's some wonderful light happening in this shot, and those rows really present it well.

Thanks Leo, Ton, Chris and Jeff for showing appreciation for this. This one was in the archives, and I am putting together a self published book that needed a b&w vineyard. All of my other vineyard shots have color that I like, so I dug this one up. This was taken with a strong grad which caused the oaks to go near black. If I shot this today, I would shoot two exposure and blend them to hold the oaks (sounds like a breakfast order request: "and hold the oaks, please"). BTW, when I say self publishing a book, I will be using it to promote my photography. You guys can do the same. Go to www.mypublisher.com. For around $30.00 you can make your own 9X12 hardcover book with your own photography. If you order 3, you can get a 40% discount, all done over the internet. I am not sure how it works for overseas, but there are other online bookmakers, I think MPix does the same thing. Its pretty cool to design your own booklike portfolio and it looks quite professional. Cheers!

"If I shot this today, I would shoot two exposure and blend them to hold the oaks"

 

not trying to be funny here but not everything has to be blended. It's perfectly possible to do that in one single shot.

Perhaps you are correct, that if the range of light in a scene does not exceed the latitude of the sensor and shows no clipping in either the shadows or highlights, then a RAW file might be double processed (still requiring some blending however). One way or another, this scene requires some masking to produce a darker sky while not darkening the oaks. If you know better, don't share your secrets on this platform, send me the solution by e-mail!

Wonderful tones in this image - well done!

Thanks Tony for stopping by. I appreciate the comments!

Thanks for your time. Click image for a Larger view!

there is no secret apart from using no filters. And really, no blending is needed. If you want I can send you some examples made in high contrast conditions, even higher than this one, where it proved easy to hold on to detail.

Beautiful composition. compliments -koushik

Very beautiful tones! Best regards

Very good composition and contrast.

Thanks Koushik, Diego and Hussein for the favorable observations. Yes, Ton, I would like to see some examples.