CallMeAlan.uk

The Cemetery in the Snow, Newbury, Berkshire

We don't get a lot of snow here in the UK. Even less nowadays, thanks, presumably, to global warming. But just this last weekend, in mid-March 2018, we were treated to a considerable downfall, and woke up to 4 to 6 inches of it on Sunday morning. As a keen photographer I felt I needed to get out there with my camera, and where better than the cemetery?

After taking 50 or so pictures I was getting pretty damned cold and called it a day. When I got home to review the pictures I realised a couple of crucial facts:

» One: between bright white snow and dark old gravestones there's a massive contrast range which, though everything looks fine to the eye, the camera is torn between getting the whites right or getting the darks right - it can't handle both

» Two: snow is white, right? No. It may look white to you, but to the camera it ranges anywhere between blue and yellow. It picks up the colour of the sky and, to some extent, its immediate surroundings. If you've ever seen a picture of a sunny snow scene with partial shadows you'll spot very blue and very yellow snow, not white.

So in my shots, when initially attempting to make the snow pure white (well, shades of pure grey - white is just nothingness in a photograph) I was failing. The point is that you just have to accept that the snow has been tinted by sky and clouds.

Therefore I gave up trying to get the pictures what I thought was right and thought, well, this is a chance to fool around with them, and opened up my treasure chest of effects.

Here, then, are my snowy cemetery pictures, and not a one of them is as it came out of the camera. I've used one of:

» Capture One alone, pushing the adjustments beyond normal or usual
Or filters from the NIK collection:
» Color Efex
» Silver Efex
» Analog FX

Well, like them or not, here they are .....

Pentax K-1. 50mm, ISO 400.