Icy path

Niagara Falls is not a favorite winter destination. But I happened to be there a couple of weeks ago, and it was just before first significant snowfall this year. Lucky us, many places were still accessible, and it was calm and not many people there. I am sure the ice on the trees is from the splashing waterfall water, as there was no similar phenomena anywhere else but on the Goat Island, in that corner.
I was wondering how to process the image at first. The ice-covered trees created almost monochrome image, with slight winter tint on a cloudy day. I liked that, but the green grass on the other side of the falls (left corner) was coming through, spoiling the feeling. I decided to convert it into black and white. It was a great exercise to try digital “filters” for B&W conversion, mentioned in the “Light and Land” e-book I reviewed yesterday. I found them right in my Lightroom presets :). The blue filter worked best. So I had the image where I wanted, with well visible shapes and translucent ice, but without colorful distraction. Now, I wanted the wintery feel back in. Again, Michael Frye’s tip- and I went to Split Tone panel. I made a Virtual Copy of the image, Reset the settings and lifted the blue-violet tone right from the original image. Now, I had the best of both worlds.