Monastery Road Utah

On many of my trips out west I would just drive and hope to stubble

upon a good photographic opportunity. There is just something very

peaceful to be driving in a rural area in search of a good image. The

good thing about overcast days is that search can go on all day long

as I find the morning and evening light to be my favorites. On one

such trip in Utah I spotted a road sign that read "to the monastery."I

turned down the road and after about two miles this tree covered road

appeared before me. I liked the composition immediately and pull over

and starting unpacking my 4x5 equipment. The bad news was that the

perfection place to set up was in the middle of the road. The good

news was that it was not a road that was well traveled. Using the zone

system I placed the brightness snow in zone VII 1/2 and everything

else fell in place for a normal development. The thing that was nerve

racking about film is that you never sure about anything until you saw

your developed negative, I always duplicated my exposures and

developed them separately just in case This made a beautiful silver

print so I decided to scan it and see what I could do with it

digitally. I posted the original about a year ago and since then my

digital processing skills have improved so I decided to give it

another go. The differences are subtle but it's those little things

that can add up to improve the overall image. The main difference

being better sharpening skills which I believe does take awhile to

master. Something that I have been adding to images of late that

amounts to an overall contrast increase is an Unsharp Mask with the

following settings: Amt 20, Radius 20. Try it and I'm sure will find

it a useful tool and remember , you can reduce the effect my lowing

the opacity of the layer.

A very beautiful image. The peacefulness of countryside you write about is in it. It also shows so well the amount of work you put into creating it. It was worth it. Congratulations.

Leo, well done, you discussion of zones is not often heard on these forums and it is a great image to use as a reminder regarding getting the entire range of light into the original image rather then depending on software adjustments later, adjustments that can never add any data to the image. Best regards.

Thank you Adam and Craig. Craig, you make a valid point.