Wind Swept

Hi Eva!

Sastrugi can have very interesting shapes! Doing a lot of snow and Ice photography, I am not telling you anything new by describing the presentation of the values as being somewhat difficult. This is especially so when posting these for people with varying calibration of monitor. For a fine print one can work it out pretty well, given a known lighting for the display. Here is a bit more chancy. Even on my large calibrated monitor (finally made it back home) this one looses some of the detail in the high values. I expect that seen large in the original or as a print it does hold the detail better. Always a fine line between lively snow texture and too light or dark!

Thanks for sharing!

Regards: Tom

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the input. The light was quite bright this morning when I took this image. I went back later in the afternoon and the light was a little less difficult. I may post one of those images next as a comparison. BTW - Never heard of sastrugi before. Thanks for that too.

Curves in photoshop is a great tool for dealing with such subjects. Indeed a little lower light helps with these, though not so low that you loose the luminosity. Sastrugi is quite common in the high mountains where the wind has a lot of time to carve the snow. Also quite common on the North Slope of Alaska, where the orientation can be so consistent so as to provide a pretty good compass. Looking fwd to more images!

Regards: Tom

I was wondering if we'd see some images from last week's storm. Eva, this does a fine job of showing off the shapes sculpted by the wind. I like the sense that this could be an aerial view and the sweeping line bottom left that lead into the view. Geez, another foot tomorrow...things are getting deep.

Brings back a few good memories and a ton of bad ones, Eva. We would get blizzards in Idaho that would literally last for days. Frankly I don't miss them at all. I think this a cool shot, but It's tough to tame the whites. I hope you get thru the storms OK.

I really love sastrugi (new word for me too!), and this nicely captures them, but I think darkening the image a bit would enhance the structures in the snow.

Eva: Wonderful textures and lines. Looks like an aerial view of a mountain range. Well seen and captured.>=))>

Plenty of new snow and wind to keep you finding these type of abstracts for a long time to come! Since colors are not the attraction here, the textures and tones must keep the interest. For me, the view is a little too broad, especially lacking some FG interest. Maybe a tighter view of some of the drifts, or use a dominant drift in the FG. I'm pretty sure a high key image was your intent, though a slightly darker exposure might bring out more textures.

HI Eva,

The shapes and textures of the snow are looking good in this image, but I like the idea of darkening the image just a tad to bring out the shapes and textures a bit more. We just got 16 inches of snow here, and I am going to be studying the Sastrugi myself in the near future. I am looking forward to see what you come up with in future posts of these wonderful abstracted images.