Brian's Winter Close-ups

RoseCat said:
Nature’s jewels indeed! :inlove:


Snapseed is perfect for that. Just apply the sharpening, and then apply the smoothing. Then go into View Edits and you can then paint the sharpening and smoothing to the parts you want. Easy peasy.
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Thanks. I’ll have to go and see if I can figure that out. [emoji3]:)
 
FundyBrian said:
Baubles.
View attachment 105841
One of my favourite things of winter is looking for icy jewels in the brooks amid flowing water. It requires just the right combination of weather conditions to make it happen. A recent rain or melt followed by colder temperatures. But if the cold temperatures go on too long the whole thing freezes solid and there’s nothing to see. It generally requires a low camera angle, just a few cm above the water, a tripod you can put under water but is heavy enough not to be pushed by the current, and some good rubber boots. Edit: also a short jacket so the back tail of the jacket won’t hang in the water when you crouch down.
PureShot brackets > Fusion HDR > Snapseed. Here I found I wanted to sharpen the ice but not the water and smooth the water but not the ice so I made 2 versions and masked them together in Leonardo. Then I added a rectangular vignette. I can’t remember seeing a rectangular vignette anywhere else than Leonardo and I like it quite well.
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Beautiful and so worth the effort you went to!
 
FundyBrian said:
Thanks. I’ll have to go and see if I can figure that out. [emoji3]:)
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Feather Frost.
Watermarked6(2018-02-03-1455).jpg

I’ve seen this sort of frost so rarely that I presume it requires very specific conditions to form. Probably high humidity, zero wind, rapidly falling temperature. Also, just above flowing water by only a few cm. Less than 5cm. The “feathers” are not built on anything. They are free standing, each 2-3cm long. Quite exquisite.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
 
FundyBrian said:
Feather Frost.
View attachment 105964
I’ve seen this sort of frost so rarely that I presume it requires very specific conditions to form. Probably high humidity, zero wind, rapidly falling temperature. Also, just above flowing water by only a few cm. Less than 5cm. The “feathers” are not built on anything. They are free standing, each 2-3cm long. Quite exquisite.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Click to expand...
Amazing. I would love to see a time-lapse of this frost forming.
 
FundyBrian said:
Feather Frost.
View attachment 105964
I’ve seen this sort of frost so rarely that I presume it requires very specific conditions to form. Probably high humidity, zero wind, rapidly falling temperature. Also, just above flowing water by only a few cm. Less than 5cm. The “feathers” are not built on anything. They are free standing, each 2-3cm long. Quite exquisite.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Click to expand...
FundyBrian said:
Frost Fantasy.
View attachment 105965
I had to be so careful not to touch anything or disturb the ground to prevent collapsing the frost. I only found this delicate frost in the small brook in a sheltered spot.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
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Exquisite, indeed!!
 
FundyBrian said:
Feather Frost.
View attachment 105964
I’ve seen this sort of frost so rarely that I presume it requires very specific conditions to form. Probably high humidity, zero wind, rapidly falling temperature. Also, just above flowing water by only a few cm. Less than 5cm. The “feathers” are not built on anything. They are free standing, each 2-3cm long. Quite exquisite.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Click to expand...

FundyBrian said:
Frost Fantasy.
View attachment 105965
I had to be so careful not to touch anything or disturb the ground to prevent collapsing the frost. I only found this delicate frost in the small brook in a sheltered spot.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Click to expand...
These are beautiful...
And what Jilly said.
 
Watermarked11(2018-02-01-2213).jpg

I’m often struck by the delicate and graceful shapes formed by grasses even after being buffeted by winds and frozen by bond chilling temperatures. I’m surprised they don’t get crushed by the weight of snow or shredded by the wind.
PureShot DNG, snapseed.
 
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Long spiky crystals of frost, as much as 3cm long.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Thanks to RoseCat for pointing out the edit brush function in Snapseed. This was a case where I needed less exposure in the top left and more in the bottom right. To preserve the clarity of this image I posted it at 3000px via Safari instead of my usual 1536 via the Mobi app.
 
FundyBrian said:
View attachment 106042 Long spiky crystals of frost, as much as 3cm long.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Thanks to RoseCat for pointing out the edit brush function in Snapseed. This was a case where I needed less exposure in the top left and more in the bottom right. To preserve the clarity of this image I posted it at 3000px via Safari instead of my usual 1536 via the Mobi app.
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Wow. Sharp in every sense of the word! Fab.
 
FundyBrian said:
View attachment 106041
I’m often struck by the delicate and graceful shapes formed by grasses even after being buffeted by winds and frozen by bond chilling temperatures. I’m surprised they don’t get crushed by the weight of snow or shredded by the wind.
PureShot DNG, snapseed.
Click to expand...
So beautiful. I would imagine this looks great in black and white too. :thumbs:
 
FundyBrian said:
View attachment 106041
I’m often struck by the delicate and graceful shapes formed by grasses even after being buffeted by winds and frozen by bond chilling temperatures. I’m surprised they don’t get crushed by the weight of snow or shredded by the wind.
PureShot DNG, snapseed.
Click to expand...
You described it well...delicate and graceful. Lovely image, Brian.
 
FundyBrian said:
View attachment 106041
I’m often struck by the delicate and graceful shapes formed by grasses even after being buffeted by winds and frozen by bond chilling temperatures. I’m surprised they don’t get crushed by the weight of snow or shredded by the wind.
PureShot DNG, snapseed.
Click to expand...
FundyBrian said:
View attachment 106042 Long spiky crystals of frost, as much as 3cm long.
PureShot DNG, Snapseed.
Thanks to RoseCat for pointing out the edit brush function in Snapseed. This was a case where I needed less exposure in the top left and more in the bottom right. To preserve the clarity of this image I posted it at 3000px via Safari instead of my usual 1536 via the Mobi app.
Click to expand...
Lovely.... winter/snow images are definitely growing to be some of my favorites.
 
JillyG said:
Wow. Sharp in every sense of the word! Fab.
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There's great potential for image sharpness in DNG files because DNG images don't get the heavy dose of system-based jpeg noise reduction, etc. The difficulty is that when viewed in my Camera Roll the DNG images only show a low resolution preview image, not the full resolution view, so it is very hard to tell in advance if the file is worth working on. You pretty much have to go through the editing process to find out, which makes the usual initial editing ineffective, which makes the whole process a lot slower.
 
JillyG said:
So beautiful. I would imagine this looks great in black and white too. :thumbs:
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That would be interesting to try. This one didn't call out B&W to me since what attracted my interest, beyond the form, was the infinite nuances of browns left in the grass after the greens have been leached away. Winter is the one time of year I feel the change to B&W is the obvious choice. We go back to the basic rule of B&W, lacking good tonal separation we must have colour separation. But lacking any amount of colour (in the winter) everything becomes tonal separation, which means you are thinking directly in B&W.
 
Blackberry plant.
Here’s a photo I made earlier in the winter when some plants were still clinging to a few leaves. The plant has given up trying to stand up and is now laying out flat on the snow like limp lettuce. This is the photo I was thinking of following a previous ramble about winter photos and B&W often being an obvious choice.
IMG_3821.JPG

I have spent 3 different times since I made the original photo experimenting with various edits in numerous apps trying to jazz it up a little. This first one looks sort of like parchment paper.
IMG_3823.JPG

This one has some oriental watercolour look to it. I ended up not liking any of them. They lost the simplicity and purity of snow. And you know the expression “never eat yellow snow”. Or if you live in a climate without much snow perhaps that expression is not part of the popular culture.
IMG_7884.JPG

So I’m back much closer to the original photo, brightened up a bit, and a couple of things retouched from the snow. The flash of colour amid a field of white when most of the other visible plants are shades of brown.
 
FundyBrian said:
Blackberry plant.
Here’s a photo I made earlier in the winter when some plants were still clinging to a few leaves. The plant has given up trying to stand up and is now laying out flat on the snow like limp lettuce. This is the photo I was thinking of following a previous ramble about winter photos and B&W often being an obvious choice.
View attachment 106085
I have spent 3 different times since I made the original photo experimenting with various edits in numerous apps trying to jazz it up a little. This first one looks sort of like parchment paper.
View attachment 106086
This one has some oriental watercolour look to it. I ended up not liking any of them. They lost the simplicity and purity of snow. And you know the expression “never eat yellow snow”. Or if you live in a climate without much snow perhaps that expression is not part of the popular culture.
View attachment 106087
So I’m back much closer to the original photo, brightened up a bit, and a couple of things retouched from the snow. The flash of colour amid a field of white when most of the other visible plants are shades of brown.
Click to expand...
I much prefer the last one too... it’s lovely! This type of image really doesn’t need any apping, IMO.
 
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