Hi Bruce,
One of the big misnomers within photography is that to make good images you need to have good equipment. This is a bit like assuming that to be a good writer, you need to own a good pen!
As is proved over and over again, it is not the camera that sees good photographs; it is the photographer!
That is why I am pleased to see you submitting photographs from your compact camera.
Photographs of old bush roads shrouded in cloud are not new, and while this does not mean we should not be making photographs like this, it does mean we should be giving some thought to how we treat the image in postproduction.
Rather than treating this as a straight colour photograph from your digital compact camera, I would be taking the photograph into Photoshop or whichever photo editing program you use, and I would be looking to soften the image somehow.
In the example below I have created a new layer and converted this layer to black-and-white; then I have changed the opacity on this black-and-white layer to reveal some of the colour from underneath.
The tricky part of this process is that I have created another layer using just a solid colour, a warm light brown.
What I now have is three layers in Photoshop… the Background layer (your original photo) that for the moment remains untouched. Then above that I have the layer with the solid colour (#c6c0b8 or there abouts). This layer mode had been set to Lighten, with opacity of 68%. Then above that layer is the Black and White conversion with the layer mode set to Soft Light at 100%.
Believe me when I say that there thousands of different options that you can apply to an image in postproduction. The challenges for you is to decide which one you like the most with your photograph.
Now there is just one more adjustment I would like to make to the image. You need to crop the top so that we do not see that white hole in the top of the trees.
Cheers for now, Anthony.
Image Doctor's edited version
