Winter scene.

Sorry, I couldn't come up with any type of title, so I just labeled the post what the image is of.

Thanks,
Travis

My only critique is that there is an awfully lot of sky.  I think a square crop would look great, and even better in black and white.

I think a mixture between the two might work.  Travis, yours looks like it is blown out, which it wasn't in capture.  Mike's is a touch dark but the detail is better.

O.k. here goes, Ansel Adams.

Tonal questions will be answered when you view his images. I would suggest a book, I find the images from the internet are not very good, do to compression or calibrations.

I have a book "Ansel Adams, 400 Photographs" which I got from costco.

Dark? nah :=) Put the images side by side, you'll see depth and a pretty good tonal spectrum.

Now, if I had the original, of course my workshop would be much better, I only had the tiny one up there to work with.

My last workshop? the snake, if you still have it, you'll see that it was red, that's because the image was, I also did burning, to draw attention to the lost head. As a wildlife photographer, I zero in on the eyes first and go from there. I didn't want to say much at the time, the workshop was to draw attention to the head. You have the original, have a look, the head is lost per say, by using paint brush or burn tool you'll draw attention to it.

Black and white is not black and white as you know, there are ranges in tones, Ansel Adams had his tonal chart which today can be known as "Photoshop" in the dark room, along with other means to get what he wanted. And Granted, he used a view camera at F64, thus the F64 group they had along with Edward Weston and others. Old timers will say we can't do the job of a view camera, correct, so, what's to stop us in taking images with modern equipment.? In the picture shown above, one may say you missed, and rightly so, take notice for example, the trees in the foreground, they are out of focus, it's beacuse of improper use of Hyper-focal Distance at F16. A rule of thumb is 1/3 of the way focus, recompose and capture the scene. I have success with 2/3 focus into the scene recompose and capture. But, if you focus at infinity, focus begins there and continues, thus missing out what is in front.

Going back to Adams, set a standard, now we have photoshop to do something like he did in the dark room, one of the areas in photoshop is called "Selective colors" the three colors I use are Gray, white and black, in that order and it's the last process to my B/W conversion. Having said that, there are other areas as well, but, that's for portraiture, the selective colors I use for landscape.

I have mentioned before, I believe you have used the darkroom before, to others, if they want to do B/W conversions, they need to view actual B/W images and imprint themselves and look at the tonal values, then, when they are in photoshop, they will quickly say yuck to Grayscale or even the word grayscale will make them vomit, not only that, they will quickly say gross to the Hue in Hue/Sat desaturation.
They will sit there and say now what, and soon will experiment with the possibilities of gradient maps, channel mixer etc. Then, they will see a B/W unfold before their very eyes and it will be their EYES that see not some freeking number that tells them what is and what is not. Paint first, use the eyes to see, then and only then manage the numbers to correct for printing white = 230 cream to 245 white and black =10 to 20

I don't like to talk much, I only like to show in practical, but, I guess I need to explain things which I don't like doing.
Biggest reason, I've been bashed in the past, I tend to shut up and smile. Like this   


End note, I used the word "View" the images, that means don't look at the image and flip the page. Spend some time on the image, scan, be aware of the range in the image, depth, what is causing your eye to "Be" in the image and why? What is the common light, where is it, what is the common look to the image, is it kind of dark in the foreground leading to light in background, is it vise versa. What is the image doing from the left to right, as though reading a book.

Hey, my end note was not what college taught me, I believe they couldn't teach it, it comes from seeing, as  Master ED says. You have to train your eye to see it and then capture it to the best of your ability. O, BTW, your learning will end when you die, no one is "THERE" or "IT" I believe Ed would be the first to say he's still learning, so what, he's way ahead then most, but, that still doesn't stop us or even him to learn something new. Or even learning what he's seeing, our gain, I'm sure there are little things that turn on his idea light bulb, everyone learns, just at different stages in their life.  O.K. phew, I better quit.