B&W Landscape from a walk today

[joe l.]

Not quite the landscapes that some folks have (I'm so jealous of the folks who live out West in the mountains), but I went for a walk today here's a B&W of the thawing stream near my house. I wanted to capture the mist a little better, but in the process the pic got a little dark. Any suggestions for capturing mists? It actually was hanging just below the trees all along the streamside, but in the pic only barely shows up in the upper RH corner, where the fading sun catches it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/jdl1020/My%20Amateur%20Photos/PineCreekBW1.jpg

[Karl Johnston]

If i were to suggest one thing for improving this photo it would be to crop out your out of focus branches in the lower portion of the photo - keep the 2/3 of the foreground is the general rule (or 1/3, depends on the foto) to draw the eye in and around the image. Crop just wheret the large twig ends towards the top and you would have a much better image, compositionally, IMHO.

Landscapes are fun, take a look at my website for a ton of them, the most important things in them are; creating an image that you get sucked into, capturing the color you originally saw in your mind, along with making sure principle keys to the image and the story it tells are kept in focus/sharp.

As for the mist, it really depends ..a shutter speed that's faster may help, or a levels adjustment.

[tonydee]

I think to work out how you lost your mist, it might help to see the original. I like the shot. Nice curves working throughout. I agree the bottom's relatively devoid of interesting features, but having the snow curve into the corner is a classic compositional technique. The suggestion of a bridge or building top right is both interesting and too indefinite to be anything but frustrating.

[joe l.]

Thanks for the critiques. I'm going to crop as suggested and see what that does to the image. I can definitely see now where the grass/branches coming up kind of interrupts the overall image.

I think to work out how you lost your mist, it might help to see the original. I like the shot. Nice curves working throughout. I agree the bottom's relatively devoid of interesting features, but having the snow curve into the corner is a classic compositional technique. The suggestion of a bridge or building top right is both interesting and too indefinite to be anything but frustrating.

Problem is - the mist isn't on the original either. I'm relatively new to photography, and my biggest frustration so far is not getting the camera to "see" what I see. The mist was hanging throughout in real life, but really didn't emerge in any photo (this one was the best, and even then, it's what you see here, only a hint in the corner. I played with shutter speed, aperture, camera setting (white balance, the exposure compensation, the metering - none really made a difference). One afterthought was that I shot these with a polarizing filter on the lens - would that "dilute" out the mist/fog?

That is a train trestle/bridge in the corner. I left it out originally, as I wanted the ice/water contrast. I may try to get back to this site tomorrow, maybe I'll recompose the shot and put a little more focus on the bridge (or try a slightly different angle to take it out completely).

Thank you both for the suggestions! :) I may try to post the "fixes" in this thread - if they come out right.

[LeuceDeuce]

One afterthought was that I shot these with a polarizing filter on the lens - would that "dilute" out the mist/fog?


Absolutely.

What is mist except reflected light off of water. A polarizer will cut through it the same way it cuts through atmospheric haze.