black & white Untitled

Oh, this is quite an original snow man guarding the Yosemite Valley...

I know I know. This should've been submitted under "nudes". Sorry

if anyone is shocked by the toplessness in "landscapes". Anyway,

tough to find original stuff at yosemite, how'd I do? Any ideas or

thoughts on the black and white conversion? The lower half of the

photo was pretty dark so I tried to go for a version that would

lighten it up. Might this have been better with a darker sky (as if

it had been shot with a red filter?) Thanks to any and all that

stop by

So Jeff, what do you call this? A Snow Transgender Person??? LOL

I do prefer the snowdude to be a little brighter, so yes, use a filter, maybe grad ND. Sky isn't interesting and I'd prefer lowering the camera to include more of snowdude. Interesting pic.

Very very funny, the majesty of the background thewn the comedy of the snow 'thing'.

You hit the nail on the head. I woke up so early and drove soooo far and ended up with perfectly blue skys, not a cloud to be seen. I'm planning on trying again this Feb. maybe & will definitely look into an ND grad as I ran into several situations that could've been better with a filter

Jeff, one of my favorite places. I've never encountered "snowdude" on previous visits. To bad about the sky, been there..., watch the weather, look for a passing front. I will be laughing for a while about this one. Could be lighter but it was a bright spot in my day.

February? Yes, I plan to be there towards the end of the month myself. Unfortunately, I just checked the web cam and there's barely any snow on the valley floor. I've been wanting to go there when the snow is still on the trees but unfortunately, it doesn't last more than a couple of days. Hopefully, things will be better towards the middle of the month.

let's cross our fingers for some storms then! See ya there (this is actually a self portrait, so you should have no problem recognising me :-)

But that's ok. My real point is technical. Instead of doing the graduated filter thing, why not just bracket your exposures and blend them in PS? That would give you precise control. You'd have to use a tripod for best effect, but I understand tripods are de rigueur (or required by ordinance or something) in Ansel-land.

I got this result with levels and a mask in PS:

Barry is right and had made, already, the point with his PS work.

I didn't realise California Girls had such hairy armpits ;-)

 

Great fun shot. It's very difficult to represent snow-in-the-shade in B&W as it goes murky grey, so if it's an important part of the picture I prefer to go with colour.

 

Regarding conversion to mono I use [hue / saturation] - set master saturation to 0 and adjust the individual colours' lightness to darker (or lighter) to recreate the effects of filters. eg blue & cyan to dark = orange filter.

 

I think Barry's tweak looks pretty good. Do you have a colour version?

 

Best wishes, Jonathan

Yep. Color version is actually pretty good IMO but I was looking to beef up my black and white folder (how's that for a lame excuse?). My conversions are one layer of hue/sat left alone, then another layer of hue/sat "color" that's completely desaturated. Then, if you go back to the first layer and mess with the hue slider you get pretty decent control over some tonal changes. When I get home, I'll try to add the color version. As to hairy armpits... you've obviously never visited Berkely or Santa Cruz :-)

This one makes me smile.... Thank you!