Light and Cold

Last week we found ourselves traipsing around Syracuse New York. We stopped at the Osceola Tug Hill Ski Center where we had a delightful ski tour on beautifully groomed cross country ski trails. Of course when we planned this excursion we had no way to know that our normal stomping grounds in West Virginia would be buried under some of the best December skiing seen in a decade. No worries. Osceola is really pretty, and upstate New York provides some beautifully dramatic rural winter scenes.

These two panoramic shots are taken moments apart. The first image above has a warm orange color that belies the reality of the scene—15 degrees F, with a strong breeze blowing. Despite the ubiquitous power lines, I really like the warmth of the early winter snow.

The second panoramic shot is does a better job of representing the reality of the cold. The blue cast set-in immediately after the sun went fully behind the dusky clouds. To further accentuate the cold blues, I selectively desaturated the yellow, red, and magenta with a transparent black and white layer. All the color is still there, but the cool blues dominate the scene. Both of these images are faithful to the scene as it unfolded in less than five minutes. I used some post processing to make sure that the images really captured the moment.