Snow Walk
The sub-heading for the blog post pretty much says it all. We’d been having a cold spell (sometimes very cold), it warmed up a bit, and then came a bit of snow. When we woke up to see snow on the ground, we decided that not taking our early walk in darkness might be a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, in the dark we could slip and hurt ourselves (an increasing concern as the decades roll by). Second, in the dark we wouldn’t be able to take any photographs. So I started work early that morning in the hope the snow would survive until I could take a nice break. It did.
We started out with our usual loop, which really doesn’t offer much in the way of imagery for quite a bit. As we started approaching the woods and was feeling less than optimistic about the prospects for good landscape images, I began to look for closer-up shots. That seemed to do the trick, because not long afterwards, I came across some snow on a tree and started my day with a rather graphic image.
And just a few feet away from that were some bushes I’d photographed previously, but this time I added in the fencing, in large part because of the snow on the railing and the nice structured contrast between the wires and the shrubberies (said of course in my best Monty Python voice).
Ann suggested we take a slight detour in our hike. Instead of following our usual wider path (partially dirt, partially paved), we decided to go down a trail that went through the woods we usually walk around. Sure, it wouldn’t be as long a walk, but we might have better luck finding images.
As you can see, there is a lot of underbrush in our local woods, so it took me a few shots before I came up with something I would call presentable.
And as with earlier, when the more distant images aren’t really giving you the right vibes, it’s time to think close-up.
We eventually hit an intersection of two trails, and that seemed to open up the understory a bit. Some of the trees at the intersection seemed particularly shapeful and their branches seemed to hold the snow particularly well, If any of the shots were going to have some differentiation between the trees, this was the location to make them.
So I tried a vertical image in addition to a horizontal image to see which works best. That’s the thing about walks like this. You take a camera and one lens (in this case the Q2MR with its fixed lens and its black-and-white sensor) and go out to just enjoy yourself, experiment a bit perhaps or just play.
It was as I was messing around that I saw this image below. It’s one of those images you make a photograph of just to see what it looks like as a photograph. The camera does not “see” the same way the eye “sees.” So sometimes you have to make the image to find out if you’re seeing the image in your mind right.
To be honest, this turned out better than I’d expected. It has the ordered chaos that I was seeing and hoping to get with the image. Photographing these woodland areas, particularly when there is underbrush or a lot of smaller trees (like here) is really difficult. The trees often want to turn into a mush, with no distinction between individual trees. The residual leaves on the horizontal branches in the foreground are a bit lost unfortunately (they were a nice rust color . . . but I didn’t have a color camera with me so . . .) but the spacing and framing of the main trees makes up for that. I think this is an image I may want to live with for awhile. It seems to have a texture and a sense of depth that I was hoping for.
That’s pretty much it from our walk. Nothing like a good excuse to grab a camera and have a bit of fun.
Apologies for the delay in the posting, but you’ll probably be thankful for it (well, I guess if you enjoy the blog posts you will). Ann and I decided to get out and take a 3-day weekend trip in the bimobil. So I spent Friday through Sunday photographing instead of writing this blog post. Was it cold? Yes, very. But we stayed warm in the vehicle and actually got some photography done.
Now to find the time to develop the images (I haven’t even downloaded my chip yet) and do up a blog post.