Frosty Tree Top 2

Nice job.  :)  Might make a nice large print. 

This one works a lot better for me, both the brightness and the comp are improved a lot.

John,

I think I like this tighter composition a bit better.  It actually is more of a showcase of the tree branches and that "order from chaos" kind of presentation, rather than about frosty tree tops.

As far as what you could do differently?  Honestly, the light and conditions are really dictating the scene and not a whole lot you can do differently except to decide to shoot, or not to shoot... ;-)  Having said that, I think your attraction and goal was to frosted tree branches right? So, one thing you could do in the field would be to capture some different exposures.  A flat, gray sky has some latitude to get brighter, so overexposing a bit will make things more white, rather than gray-card gray.  The difficulty of this particular scene is that the tonal values between the frosted branches and the gray overcast is not very much, so they are essentially blending together, making it near impossible to separate, which then leads to comments about that very issue.

You could also bump up the exposure in PS, but you still have the same issue that the tonal values are close together and difficult to separate.

So, in the end, I don't think there's much in terms of your camera technique or what you can do in the field in those specific lighting conditions.  Just PS manipulation to make the best of it.

HTH

Lon

I love all the curly branches and the details, John. I agree with Lon's comments regarding the difficulty of separating tones that very close together. I think you did a nice job extracting a sense of order from a chaotic scene.

--P

Neat patterns John. I like it with slightly better with just enough cropped off the top to remove those two larger patches of sky.