Winter Grass with PS Elements

[minoly]

Dried-out grasses in the snow, particularly fresh snow, are eye catchers in our Minnesota winter. But most photos I've taken of them don't do justice to the subjects. When I was making wet prints, I had some better results using a higher contrast grade or filter. Recently I tried to adapt some "snow" techniques that were written about for Photoshop to the simpler PS Elements that I have; that meant that I had to use the "eyedroppers" in the Levels tool rather than the sliders that I'm more accustomed to. In the photos below I used the eyedropper for the white end first, then the black eyedropper and finished with the slider for the middle. I still have a ways to go, but I think this gets me closer to what I'd like to see. I'd llike to get more detail in the leaves and a little texture in the snow. At this point, it's pretty much a lot of trial and error because unexpected results pop up with the eyedroppers. (The exposures were made on Tri-X in a Minolta SRT and developed in Fomadon R09. The grass may be Switchgrass but I'm not sure.)

[Philip]

Wonderful pictures!