Michael Griswold
April 2026 - After the Snow
Original
About the Image(s)
After the Snow
4 sec at f/22 ISO 64 14 mm
A classic view of the Merced River and the Yosemite Valley enhanced by the heavy snow fall and early morning light. I wanted the mist and the falls to stand out with they mist being the focal point. The snow covered shapes the in the foreground help lead my eye into the scene. A 16x9 ratio helped to take out the kind of busy foreground that I worked really hard to keep in focus with f/22. The branch was unavoidable with a couple dozen photographers lining up and down the riverside. I was able to move later but the foreground here was nice. Won’t be able to enter it into competition since I removed the branch, but it makes a better composition without it.
8 comments posted
Hello Michael,
I really like your balanced composition. Your decision to go with B&W enhances the sense of depth. While competitions can be fun, the only judge that really matters is you. Posted: 04/03/2026 00:22:18
I really like your balanced composition. Your decision to go with B&W enhances the sense of depth. While competitions can be fun, the only judge that really matters is you. Posted: 04/03/2026 00:22:18
Thanks for your kind feedback, Rick. There wasn't a lot of color to start with so it only made sense to go with b/w. I appreciate the thought about being my own judge. :) Posted: 04/04/2026 18:36:50
Kenneth Taylor
Hello Michael,
I like your image, I would adjust the contrast. Posted: 04/03/2026 02:26:27
I like your image, I would adjust the contrast. Posted: 04/03/2026 02:26:27
I like it as is. It conveys a sense of the majesty of the park and canyon, towering peaks over a placid body of water. Posted: 04/03/2026 18:53:36
Thanks, Bruce! Posted: 04/04/2026 18:37:40
(Group 32)
Good job taking in both near and far. Posted: 04/04/2026 04:16:04
Thanks, Stephen. The place offers so many choices and options! Posted: 04/04/2026 18:38:42
Hi Mike. I am envious of the snow you found in the Valley. It doesn't last long, so you were fortunate to have these conditions, and I think made good use of them. Lovely image!
It works very well as a B&W, though I am not sure I would have been so quick to take it that direction. There is warm color in the reflections, the low distant sky, and most importantly the cliff walls on the left. I think that warmth could be dug out further and would wonderfully contrast the cool blues that exist elsewhere. But again, it is hard to go wrong with a B&W rendering of fresh snow in Yosemite.
Couple small things to maybe think about. You have some posterization in the sky. It is there in the original color version as well. It is probably from the conversion process to get to sRGB and <1MB, but it is worth looking at. There are what I'd call posterized colors in the snow foreground of the color original as well. It is not "noise" in the usual sense, since the physical scale is too large - it is coming from quantization granularity somewhere in your workflow.
Also, the sky is pretty uniform "white" in your B&W version. But there is plenty of "blue" in part of the sky in the original. So, it seems like there is an opportunity to darken part of the sky and add some variation with the right B&W conversion.
Finally, I might consider cropping a little differently. It is powerful if you can create "leading lines" of sort from the corners (or near corners). You have this in the upper left corner of your B&W version (the cliff / sky boundary leading down away from the corner). With a different crop, you could create the same in the upper right (again the cliff edge), and with I think at least one of the lower corners using the foreground snow covered rock elements. Doing this may leave you with a non-standard aspect ratio, but up to you whether that matters.
Tried some of this with the original color image in the attached below. I obviously can't fix the weird colors / posterization. Once that is in, it is hard to take out, so one needs to go back to before it got introduced.
Posted: 04/04/2026 21:18:49
It works very well as a B&W, though I am not sure I would have been so quick to take it that direction. There is warm color in the reflections, the low distant sky, and most importantly the cliff walls on the left. I think that warmth could be dug out further and would wonderfully contrast the cool blues that exist elsewhere. But again, it is hard to go wrong with a B&W rendering of fresh snow in Yosemite.
Couple small things to maybe think about. You have some posterization in the sky. It is there in the original color version as well. It is probably from the conversion process to get to sRGB and <1MB, but it is worth looking at. There are what I'd call posterized colors in the snow foreground of the color original as well. It is not "noise" in the usual sense, since the physical scale is too large - it is coming from quantization granularity somewhere in your workflow.
Also, the sky is pretty uniform "white" in your B&W version. But there is plenty of "blue" in part of the sky in the original. So, it seems like there is an opportunity to darken part of the sky and add some variation with the right B&W conversion.
Finally, I might consider cropping a little differently. It is powerful if you can create "leading lines" of sort from the corners (or near corners). You have this in the upper left corner of your B&W version (the cliff / sky boundary leading down away from the corner). With a different crop, you could create the same in the upper right (again the cliff edge), and with I think at least one of the lower corners using the foreground snow covered rock elements. Doing this may leave you with a non-standard aspect ratio, but up to you whether that matters.
Tried some of this with the original color image in the attached below. I obviously can't fix the weird colors / posterization. Once that is in, it is hard to take out, so one needs to go back to before it got introduced.
Posted: 04/04/2026 21:18:49