Snow's getting old

More snow, and I'm tired of it already. But it did give me a chance to try some more shots of snow, and this time I experimented a little bit with the skies.

So here's a few I took this morning before I went to work, just around our neighborhood:






















It was taken at ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/1250 sec. Now, here's the original:





















As you can see, I lightened the trees quite a bit, but unfortunately, I think that brightened the skies too much. I know there's a way to brighten one part of a photo and keep the rest the same, but I think it has something to do with layers, or masks, and I don't know how to do that in processing yet.

I wonder if I'd bumped the ISO if that would have helped with the trees. Hmm. Probably would've hurt the tones in the sky, though. Something to try for another day.

So here's a few more.




































Now this one was interesting. It was taken at ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/320 sec. I took it because the sun was shining directly onto this tree, and it looked so awesome. But that doesn't show in the photo at all! In fact -- it looks kind of flat. The colors are all too close to the same hue. But I still think it's interesting, just in a different way.

Here's another with a somewhat interesting sky:



















I amped the colors in the sky in this photo a lot. It was taken at ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/400 sec. I have a hard time stopping myself when I'm editing sometimes -- how far is too far? When does it start to look unnatural? It's hard to be objective when you're in the throws of editing.

I think they all have a slightly blue-ish tint to them, but I kind of like it. I almost wish that someone else (someone more pro) would edit my photos with me at the same time, but totally separately. Then we could come together and see how our versions differ. I don't know how else to learn post-processing techniques other than trial and error. It can be a little frustrating at times, but I'll probably internalize it better this way.