About the Image(s)

I was looking through my images trying to find another image that would look good in black and white. One of my mentors used to say “boring light go black and white”. I am not sure this is correct. I think its more about color. Boring color go black and white. This image was captured on March 18 2018. My husband and I went to San Francisco for a week.. The weather was raining quite a bit throughout the entire trip but I still wanted to drive to Yosemite. I wanted to take some shots in Yosemite, which was the main purpose of this trip. We used to go for a photography trip once a year. Well we did before our friend Covid 19 arrived. I did my research and read that tire chains were a good idea to have. I thought luck favors the prepared so we rented some. Turned out it was a good idea that we did because we needed them. The rain turned to snow as we got to the park and we had to put them on or turn back. It was raining and snowing but the crazy photographer did not want to turn back. My husband, a patient man, continued on with me. He put on the chains in the snow and rain freezing while he did so and we went to tunnel view. Right after this image we were advised by a park ranger that it would be a good idea to head back since the roads would likely be closing. We barely got out of the park and the rain washed out our intended route back to San Francisco but we were able to take a longer route and we made it safely. I still regret not stopping to take an image of the water running down the mountainside looking like 30 separate water falls but it was soooooo wet cold and we did not want to be stranded in the park. I will probably never get that opportunity again. I did however get this image which, while I did like it in color, I did not love it. I think it looks much more dramatic in black and white. I attached my color attempt from back then. I would probably edit it much differently if I did it in color again. My attempt looks mediocre to me now. It is amazing how much you learn without even realizing it, until you look back that is.

It was taken with a Sony a7RIII full frame camera using a Sony 24-70mm F4 lens at 24mm. I don’t remember why I stopped it down to F22 but I did. It was taken on a tripod with a shutter speed of 0.4 seconds.

Editing includes

Lightroom

* highlights, shadows, black and white adjustments

NIK Silver Effects

* Two images. One for the clouds and one for the foreground. The cloud edit was the Low Key pre-set and the foreground image was the Full Spectrum pre-set. I adjusted each image pre-set to my liking.

Photoshop

* Blended the two images to have a more balanced exposure
* Dodge and Burn layer for each of mid-tones, highlights and shadows

NIK

* Pro Contrast

Lightroom

* add some texture, clarity, highlights and shadows to select areas like trees and mountains using the brush tool