Cliffs in Snow

Another 4x5 photo from my Utah snow experience. Somewhat illustrative of the composition issue that I’ve had with view cameras:

—Too much blank sky up at the top.
—Tree sticking into the blank sky area.

—Everything just a little bit jumbled-up.

Don’t know why I might have thought having that much sky in the photo would be a good idea.

I guess that the novelty of photographing in falling snow, plus the challenge of manipulating a heavy view camera on top of an equally heavy tripod, plus having to view the scene through the ground glass back of the camera . . . don’t know.

This is the first time I’ve actually worked on the negative . . . at least in Photoshop I could darken the sky without darkening the tree, and increase the contrast in just the lower part of the pix.

Below is a shot of myself with the Toyo-Field 4x5 taken the prior afternoon. Notice the sunlight and the small cloud in the sky. Cliffs in the background are the same in both pix. And the tree!

Photos: Cliffs in Snow—Utah, 1996; Mike with Toyo-Field 4x5—Utah, 1996