I made my way to Orange County, New York today to shoot some of the more rustic areas following the scenic snow our area accumulated.  When I am doing landscape photography, my goal (aka everyone’s goal) is to capture as much dynamic range as possible in the raw file.  This is accomplished by ETTR (exposing to the right), and getting the brightness histogram as far right as possible without blowing the highlights out of the gamut.

The raw file will always be lacking in contrast before post-processing, but generally a global Curves Adjustment Layer will do the trick for me.  As we can see below, there is a bit of cloud detail in the sky in my original shot, but in general it does appear featureless.  Featureless sky = boring photo.  To give the sky a little pop, I added a new blank layer in the digital darkroom, and simply did a directional fill with the gradient tool (black to transparent).  I also changed the layer blending mode to “overlay”.  Results below.

Mostly unprocessed view, note that I adjusted the horizon and had to “add canvas” after a slight rotation.

Not a great finished product, but it is a start. #Composition mostly adheres the the rule of thirds, and I positioned my #camera to have weeds fill in some negative space in the snowy foreground.

My finalized jpeg for web view.  Digital ND filter superimposed over sky, and foreground repaired after slight rotation.

#NYS Winter scenery photo. Taken handheld with the #Tamron 16-300mm VC PZD lens and the #Canon EOS T5 #DSLR

Another successful outing with the new Tamron All-In-One lens.