Winter Wonderland
by John Williams
Recent cold weather in the Pacific Northwest has created some wild ice around the waterfalls in the Columbia Gorge. These winter “mushrooms” were along the edge of the upper tier of Multnomah Falls.
Dry roads and frozen waterfalls must be just about the ultimate temptation for a photographer. Sunday was easily the most photographers I've seen in the gorge (the tripod carrying/slr-type, as opposed to the phone camera-type of which there are always many). I was able to meet fellow NPNer Daniel Rappaport at the Women's Forum overlook. (Good to meet you!)
Nikon D80
Nikon 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 at 12 mm (18mm equiv.)
1/5 sec at f/16 and ISO 100
Comments
24 commentsLovely tones.
Well seen and nicely done.
John
Nice frozen water formation .Very sharp and clear picture
Awesome shot. Bizarre and unique.
The large version is a must-see.
--P
Albert Darmo
canada
While there my eye was fascinated with the bigger scene (a common problem for me), and I didn't think about/take intimate photos that focused on the amazing details in the ice. Given another chance down the road, I'll try and do smaller scenes too.
Ronald, it's a black and white conversion that I've added a little bit of color back into. I'm really green at BW conversion, and have been experimenting a lot. I find I prefer mostly cooler tones, and that's what I've gone with here. (To compare to warmer tones, have a look at Stuart's masterful images.)
Since I'm so new at black and white, I've taken to analyzing images I like in Photoshop. My mind works best if I set the information panel to read lab values; I find it much easier to see what's going on than with rgb values. What I've found on the images that I like is that most have color added, but interestingly not as a straight duotone. Most have little to no color in the shadows, and similar in the extreme highlights. The color that is added is often the strongest around the three-quarter range. Using curves, I tried to mimic that effect here.
Hopefully that last paragraph actually makes some sense.
Mark, I actually kept my eye out for you. One of these days we'll bump into each other out there.