High Mountain Afternoon

24Mar10

The weather steadily improved during our stay in Morzine.  The third and final day was a glorious example of spring skiing in the Alps.  There was still plenty of snow under warm blue skies – warm enough for some brave souls to be skiing in shorts.  The rumble of avalanches could be heard from time to time and you could see their evidence from the lifts.

This E-520 shot needed to be developed from raw because of the greater dynamic range of those files.  This enabled the detail in the highlights to be recovered, adding texture to the snow, while simultaneously allowing more to be drawn from the shadows.  White balance was tweaked to reduce the strong blue cast and finally a little extra contrast was added through curves.

Edit: on reflection, I think that this works better in black and white:

This neutralises the blue haze and also, for me, emphasises the purity and grandeur of the mountains.  This was converted from the colour original using a tweaked version of the ‘Dramatic’ preset in SilverEfex Pro.

Filed under: Aperture, ColorEfex Pro, Colour, Landscape   |  1 Comment
Tags: Aperture, Colour, E-520, Landscape