A White Christmas in Southern Illinois

We are spending Christmas with family in Southern Illinois where a White Christmas doesn't happen often

Christmas Eve brought 4" of snow, and today (the 26th) the skies cleared allowing for some great winter skies.

Image taken with Nikon D7000, 35-70mm f/2.8. PP with ACR & CS5

Happy New Year !

First, I want to wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year !

We've been at home in Missouri after Christmas in Nebraska. We've had a great time with the kids and family. The weather across the midwest for the entire holiday season hasn't allowed for great photography. The natural colors on the plains at this season are buffs and grays, and with the cloudy skies it makes for a very monochrome color palate.

What do you do with a capture with little color? Work with the contrasts of the image and try to generate an interesting image in black and white. This image almost begins as sepia in it's original color. I've played with a number of settings to get to this "antique postcard" look.

The conversion is done in Photoshop CS4 using adjustment layers:
- B&W Conversion at default settings
- Exposure, with offset set at -0.065 (to generate mid-range contrast)
- Photo Filter, choosing Sepia filter, then increasing the density to 40%

The vignette is a large brush (1000 px) with a speckle pattern and 10% opacity. Used two overlapping passes to provide the graduated pattern. No sharpening to help with the antique look.