Frozen in Time

Made another sunrise trip to MacLennan Park in Topeka yesterday morning before the snow melted. Found this really cool spot with a frozen waterfall. I haven't finished tweaking this one but wanted comments on the WB. In processing I changed it to shade to warm it up but does it still look too blue? Also, does the 10 mm setting produce too much distortion in this scene? I used a small aperture to capture the starburst.

Canon Rebel XTI, tripod
10-22 mm lens
ISO 100, F22 @ 1/4

Angela, I really like the composition, and the sunburst works well. And what an interesting subject!

I do think the snow and ice are too blue, but don't warm the whole picture. I would adjust the warmth on a new layer and do a gradient blend to keep the white balance the same in the top half. I also think that the FG could be a bit brighter, but that's me. I am not concerned with the distortion.

Certainly a successful photo. What a find.

A technique you can use to correct the white balance is one I learned at the knee of the Old Master himself. One click with the Adobe Camera Raw white balance tool on a spot in the image that should be white or a neutral color will usually get you in pretty good shape. In this case, clicking somewhere on the ice should help a lot. If you only work with jpegs, in Photoshop you can use /file/open as/ and then select Camera Raw as the file type. One odd thing about the "open as" option, though, is that sometimes it blows up. An odder thing about it is that, at least in my Photoshop, there are two identical Camera Raw items in the drop down list, and if one doesn't work to open a jpeg, the other one will. If you're lucky, you'll be able to open your jpeg in ACR.

And, no, the 10mm lens is not a problem that I can see.

Angela: A bit too blue perhaps but in this light one would expect a good bit of blue in the snow so I don't find this objectionable at all. The distortion didn't catch my attention at all until you mentioned it and even then I'm OK with it as is. Nicely done and kudos to you for braving the elements. >=))>

Angela, Nice job of getting an interesting winter shot, I've wanted to try frozen waterfalls and had considered it for Sat. morning but got too busy.

If this was mine I think I would try to warm and also brighten the foreground a little and also add a little contrast. It looks like there is a little bit of sunlight hitting the snow on the right side of the ice that might show nicely if brightened.

I agree that I wouldn't have thought of the distortion if it wasn't mentioned.

Angela,

Very nice shot. As already said, I wouldn't have noticed any distortion without it being mentioned. Like Dominic said, I would maybe try processing the shot with 2 different white balances, one for the foreground to warm it up a bit and a different one for the sky to keep that nice blue color.

Frozen falls are a nice change of pace when you can find them. The cool tones of the snow aren't way out of line to me in this shot but you could certainly play around with different WB's and tweak it to taste.

One thing I would mention is that the definition and contrast in the trees around the sunburst is lacking. I typically burn in some contrast and definition in the details around the sunbursts that I shoot.

Nice that you've found a place you can return to over and over Angela. Thanks for sharing!

I think the color tone and distortion are both fine.

I think what you should have done though is to go out on the ice to be right up on the waterfall that would really make good use of the 10mm