Last week I posted Friday Image No.92 and made comment about my having some kind of image blindness. In this particular case I think it was down to the conditions I was shooting in and the expectations I had in my mind. I often go out hoping for wonderful light and clean air, only to find the conditions are dull or hazy. Below you can see the starting shot for Image No.92. before any adjustments were made.
The light was quite nice now looking at this but it certainly wasn’t sharp light which is what I guess I wanted. I still took the shot but it’s only now that I recognise it’s potential. In case you’re wondering why I included all the sky, there is actually a hill in the foreground that prevented me from framing the shot any lower.
For the processing of this image I decided to crop the image to a more panoramic format which would remove the distracting sky and focus attention on the two halves of the image. There is the left half with the path and the right half with the mountain which is almost the inverse of this.
My initial thought was to produce a soft image with subtle colours that would make more of the hazy conditions. Often when you try to fight against and counter the conditions you end up with an image that doesn’t achieve what you want. It’s usually much better to work with the conditions and emphasise them even more. In the following screenshot you can see the conversion settings used in Lightroom – the colour temperature used is quite a bit warmer than the capture setting (originally around 5200).
The other key change was to use some negative Dehaze, which was set to -7. This was sufficient to lighten the image and emphasise the haze. I also added some selective adjustment to the shadows on the hillside to the right. This was intended to open the shadows so that they appeared to have texture rather than be a mass of black. The resulting image can be seen below.
For the final conversion to Black and white I used On One Photo Effects 10.5 with a Tonal adjustment to highlight the detail together with a black and white conversion. This is the same adjustment that I tend to use with my “Views from the Moors” collection of work.
I personally can’t make my mind up which I prefer most, colour or black and white. I think I’m favouring the colour version.
The Lightweight Photographer 
I’m a B&W person but I love the color pix.
Thanks Don. That’s good praise indeed.
Why not enjoy both equally – I do, it’s a very good photo.
Thank you. Whilst I may enjoy both it feels like cheating to publish both even though they are very different.
Robin
Thanks for the b&w versus colour comparisons and if course the RAW photo before and after. Only when you see alterations by a genius can you begin to understand the possibilities in digital.
Thank you very much. Not sure I would call myself a genius by any stretch of the imagination. I still struggle to realise in the image what I see in my mind.
I think I like the colour version better Robin but also the B&W version has something about it.As a matter of interest is that a road in the valley or a stream.
Best Wishes.
John.
Thanks John. It’s actually a walking path. If you drive right to the end of Haweswater and park you will be able to pick up this path.