I processed this Misty scene in Duotone to bring back the atmosphere of the moment that I felt was lost in the original image.

Whilst misty scenes can be attractive, they don’t always make good images. In this case, low drifting clouds hid the hill top most of the time. Occasionally a slight break in the cloud allowed a brief view of the TV mast and a little light to sparkle from the ground snow.

To isolate the subject I used a telephoto lens but this also removed the sense of the drifting cloud.

The subject

A TV mast is not the most exciting subject, but this man-made feature contrasts well with nature’s trees. On a clear day, it is less interesting, probably because the surrounding rocky hilltops and tall trees dominate.

On the day I took the image the hilltops were completely covered in clouds. Only occasionally did short openings in the cloud allow a view of the mast. At that point, the surrounding area was still cloud-covered, so it appeared as though the mast peaked out of the cloud.

A thin layer of snow on the ground helped to reflect some light. The surrounding trees, snow-free, remain quite dark.

Where is the mast?

182 meters above sea level this TV mast sits on top of Barskeoch Hill in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It can be seen from a number of surrounding areas, but I have never got up close.

I stood in Dalbeattie town when my attention was caught by the mast appearing and disappearing. I decided it was worth a picture. Using my Micro 4/3s OM E-5 I slipped on a 75-300 zoom (150-600mm Full Frame equivalent) and took the image at the 300mm.

The lighting

The light was poor. The minimum aperture on my zoom lens at 300mm is f6.7, so I set the ISO to 1600. The resultant image displayed a lot of noise, fortunately, Photolab5 Deep Prime does a good job dealing with it. Even so, the image lacked the atmosphere that first attracted me to take the picture. This is a problem caused by using a long telephoto to eliminate the surrounding area.

If I had used a wider angle lens I could have shown the surrounding area, but the mast and chink of light coming through the cloud would not have stood out. It would be unclear in the image as to what the intended subject is.

The Process

To rescue the moment, I chose to convert the image to monochrome and then reintroduce some colour using the tone curve. Initially, I used the RGB channel to increase the contrast and bring out more detail, this is simply a slight S curve.

Using an inverted S curve in the Red channel, the highlights are pulled down, whilst the shadows are pulled up. Pulling the Red channel up adds red to the monochrome image. Pulling the line down adds cyan. In both cases the deep the curve the greater the colour saturation.

By adjusting the Red channel I can balance the amount of red added to the shadow areas with the cyan added to the highlights. This creates an image similar to the original, but with more colour contrast, interest and impact.

• Camera – Olympus E-M5MkII
• Lens – Zukio ED 75-300mm at 300mm
• Exposure – ISO 1600 f6.7 1/250s
• Processed with Photolab 5

You can see examples of using the Green channel and Blue Channel on the tone curve to create Duotones.