What are Masks?

I really want to visit the black forest one day so let that be my inspiration. I don't know if this is actually the Black Forest or not but it reminded me of that. The font is Nueva Std. I looked up some forest fonts but all that I tied to download came up with an "error". This font has serfs, putting it in the old time fonts- even though it really doesn't feel that way. Both the picture and the forest have an eerie feel.

For Snow I used a clipping mask. For the first one I copied the background layer (its the picture). Then, added a clipping. For SNOW it really similar. Instead of just using the clipping mask you have to embedded the photo first. I picked snow because its WINTER. My background started out as winter, but the s and n were really had to see. I moved to grey but the same problem occurred. I didn't want it to be black because thats not really a winter color (the nights aren't even black!). Therefore, I picked a darker blue.