WC-Winter Trees

There certainly are evergreens in winter in the image. I like it very much. Not sure why the light background around the tree on the right.

A dramatic scene. Well done in black and white.

Not much of a fan for B&W, but like what you have here!! Very dynamic! IMHO works well for the challenge. Thanks for sharing.

Very dramatic Kathy. I like the B&W conversion for both El Cap and the tree on the right, the softness of the snow on its branches a nice contrast to the solid rock. However, I also see the halo/artefact Jim mentioned in the sky.

Overall though, the textures on El Cap are outstanding, and the misty clouds add so much pop - really love it!

Beautiful clouds on El Capitan, framed well by the trees. The brightness (looks like dodging to me) around the tree on the right is distracting. You can avoid that by dodging through a mask of the tree (check out Tony Kuyper's web site for how to, if you haven't already) and it would be nice to get some tonal contrast between the trees at the bottom and the ridge behind (again burning/dodging through masks may work although adjusting how the bw conversion sees the colors might be easier). This is definitely a keeper and in spite of all the words used to suggest improvements it looks very good as presented.

Hi Kathy There are enought evergreens here. so i wont make a complaint to Mark i think Marks advice would make this stunning image even stronger


Albert Darmo
Canada

I tried burning down the area on the URC that had a halo around the tree, caused, I think, by the Nik Silver Effex choice that I made for processing. I hope this looks a bit better. Thanks for the feedback.

I'm not normally big on b&w images either but I do like this one, Kathy. It's very dynamic and I think the fog is a very big part of that. The evergreens are a significant part of the image also and thus I think it fits the theme very well. The composition works very well but as others mentioned, the processing halo (probably from the Silver Effex) is a bit distracting. Your modified version is a little bit better but the rework apparently resulted in some banding in the sky which is actually more distracting than the original halos.

What a dramatic image! And I do agree that the snowy trees are very important in making this one your own unique take on this scene. I imagine this is spectacular either in color or B&W, but I really like the idea you are going after in the conversion. This will be a real wall-hanger once you solve those technical artifacts from the plug-in. Lots of ways to tackle this to get the results you want. What a treasure!

Huge improvement in the tree halo, Kathy.