Sylvia Williams  

Snow capped mountains by Sylvia Williams

July 2026 - Snow capped mountains

July 2026 - Sylvia Williams

Original

About the Image(s)

In July my husband and I travelled to Wyoming to get my mother in laws house ready for sale. It was mostly work but we did get out a bit and drove up into the rockies. There were very few pull offs, so this is the best snap I got of the snow capped mountains.
I had signed up for the PS Creativity virtual summit last year and am just now starting to watch all the videos. Last week the tutorial was 'Learning from the Old Masters'. The photo he was using to instruct us was fairly similar to a photo I had taken, so I thought maybe I could improve my photo.
I would love comments for both how I could have improved the original photo, as well as what you think of the editing. There are a couple of things I will try to do differently next time, but I am so over this photo I'm not going back now to try to fix it.

Nikon Z 7_2
Nikon Z 70-180mm f2/8
1/500 sec at f/13

5 comments posted

Bruce Titus   Bruce Titus
Sylvia,
Overall, a nice image. I applied a bit of dehaze to the sky to make the clouds pop a bit more... and a bit of dehaze on the snowcapped mountains... brightened up the forest and increased the clarity a bit... put a little bit of vignetting top and bottom. A great landscape photo should have a foreground, mid ground and background.... so I added a foreground.   Posted: 07/03/2026 18:15:24
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Sylvia Williams   Sylvia Williams
Bruce,
Thanks for your feedback. I especially like the foreground addition.   Posted: 07/07/2026 20:10:49
Sabine Nehls   Sabine Nehls
Sylvia, you've certainly given us a difficult task.
First of all, I think your picture, as you've edited it, is good. Bruce mentioned the layering of the image elements, such as foreground, middle ground, and background, and I agree. This division is present in your picture.
Everything else I've found on the topic of "Learning from the Old Masters" is so diverse and can't be applied to every picture, or rather, it should be considered and implemented before taking the photo.
Even a striking feature like a tree or rock isn't visible in every picture. Caspar David Friedrich also painted without foreground subjects (Mountain Landscape in Bohemia, around 1830).
I'm curious to hear the ideas and suggestions from others regarding your picture and the topic.
  Posted: 07/09/2026 14:40:50
Yvonne Cary Carter   Yvonne Cary Carter
Sylvia, Since I'm not familiar with the area I googled a few images. From what I gathered on your next visit try to get more of the snow capped mountains into the composition. As far as your edits, you did a great job in adding more detail and removing the tree on the right side. Your edits added more depth and vibrancy.

Nice editing!   Posted: 07/10/2026 13:42:17
Randy Bell   Randy Bell
Sylvia, these are the kind of scenes I see frequently. Snow capped mountains in the distance. Looking at your metadata, your focal length is 115mm. On scenes like these, using a longer focal length would help bring in the distant mountains, in this case 180mm. Though most people think about wider focal lengths for landscapes, sometimes, with mountain scenes like this, a longer focal length comes in very handy.

Not sure my photo edits are any better than what you've come up with, but I added a dehaze layer, added a little contrast with a curves layer and cropped to 16x9 aspect ratio to try to bring out the mountains a bit more. Just some suggestions, anyway.   Posted: 07/10/2026 22:38:37
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