Warm Snow

Warm in color, not in temperature. Warm snow would melt, and then it wouldn't be snow. The title would have to be "Warm Water," and that's not as interesting.

As you know, there's a fair bit of snow in Bozeman now, and quite a fair it on the mountains. Today was super busy, and I wasn't even thinking about taking a photo until I got home and looked out my window. There was beautiful, golden orange light streaming through the trees, mixing with the cooler blue shadows. After 5 minutes of my car warming up, I was on my way out Kagy to catch the mountains glowing in the waning sun.

On my way out, I knew I was racing the light. Through breaks in houses and trees, I could see the peaks in the distance, almost neon on the horizon. But I could also see the freezing shadows creeping up the slopes little by little.

Coming into the pull out a little hot for the icy roads (yes mom, I was careful. It was intentional to use the deep snow to slow me down), there was probably about 10 minutes before the light was gone. But my hands would freeze well before then, so that wasn't a big issue :)

My camera told me that I needed to shoot at f16 and 1/20. I was at 70mm on my lens, so I definitely needed a tripod. I used a 2 second delay on the shutter, so that any vibration would go away by the time the picture was taken. From there, it was a simple matter of taking frames of the mountains.

I cut most of the foreground out of the frame, since it was almost all houses and boring things like that. Nothing I really wanted. But I wanted the clouds above the mountains, since they were also glowing in the light.

First in Lr, I really had to improve contrast. First, I brightened the image and upped the contrast slider. This helped overall, but the whites were still lacking and now the shadows were gone. So up those two sliders went, as well as the clarity. Looking pretty good at this point.

Next was the pano in Ps, as well as a little curves adjustment. I brightened the midtowns where there was a lot of information, as well as the highlights. Still need more whites!

In Lr again, even more whites were needed....serious pushing this photo. I bet there's some degradation of quality. :(

For final touches, I adjusted the hue of red and orange to be more purple and red, and increased the saturation of those colors as well. This helped to bring more color into the mountains, which was more like what I saw in real life.

A few more from the shoot:

See you tomorrow!