The Tree [Not Tony's], Middlehurst Station
Phase One XF IQ150, Schneider Kreuznach LS 110mm f/2.8, 1/8 second @ f11, ISO 50, tripod mounted
When it snows heavily in Middlehurst, access around the station becomes limited. The roads are too soft for the 4WDs, the rivers flood and can't be driven on or crossed, and with low cloud you can't fly a helicopter or land a plane. However, legs remain operational and within a short walk of the Quarters there are many locations to photograph - such as this wonderful tree!
While the big snowfall remained a day away, the early storm saw a light dusting on the higher paddocks. As we wandered around the stock yards, the light was soft and delicate, aided by a drizzle of rain. But it was the pastel colours that caught my attention. And as with an earlier photo I posted of Middlehurst a week or so ago, I feel the trick in post-production for this type of subject is to keep the tonality (exposure) light and airy.
It's true that an auto levels or auto curves will set the lightest values on white and the darkest on black, giving you a full ranges of tones. However, while this is good technique generally speaking, it wasn't the solution I was looking for here. I wasn't really interested in either deep blacks or pure whites, rather a range of light tones and colours. And hence the importance of a good quality monitor, correctly calibrated so the tones can be carefully adjusted. (Mind you, then I post these photos onto the internet and social media and who knows what the resulting tonality looks like!)
Two other editing issues which may be of interest. When I ramped up the colour saturation to bring up the yellows and greens, it also increased the blues in the sky and clouds. An adjustment layer over the sky allowed these unwanted colours to be greatly desaturated, so the sky is practically grey.
And when it came to increasing the colour saturation, a gentle overall push was provided with the saturation slider first, but then to accentuate the colours that were important to me, I used the colour editor in Capture One (or the Point Colour in Lightroom/ACR) to bring up a limited range of greens and yellows. Sometimes this is a great way to give an image some punch without overpowering it with saturation.