January 2011 – Bleak Midwinter
To me, it’s been a bit of a frustrating winter. When we’ve had good snow, I’ve been committed to other things. Then, when I had time, the warm weather and rain arrived. When the cold weather returned at the beginning of January, I was ready for it. Finally, some snow!
Bleak Midwinter, Starkey Hill, Guelph, Ontario
Ambient Conditions
Original Capture
This was an overcast day with steady flurries. I knew there wasn’t a lot of contrast to work with, nor was there any directional light to create texture – so necessary for many winter photos. However, with the snow clinging to the branches, there was at least some contrast I could make use of.
Visual Design Elements
My original intention was to concentrate on wideangle and set my zoom to 24mm. There was a beautiful cedar rail fence between me and the scene that was lightly frosted in snow. At first, it seemed like an ideal image with the fence as a foreground element, but I soon realized how much of a barrier the fence was to the rest of the scene.
I moved up to the fence and immediately the scene opened up more with the foreground diagonal of the raspberry canes providing an ideal leading line from front left to mid-right. The line continues to the left following the open snow patch; the viewer’s eye is then led back to the right by the background snow patch. To me, this assemblage of layers gives the feeling of depth I strive to create in my images.
Technical Controls
72mm f/8 @ 1/40; ISO 100; tripod
Histogram
I would have preferred a faster shutter speed as there was some wind to contend with. I also would have preferred ƒ11 to maintain depth of field. I couldn’t have either, so I had to compromise by knowing I would need to crop off the foreground which could not be kept sharp.
The final exposure was 1 stop greater than recommended by the light meter and was achieved by dialing in +1 stop of exposure compensation. The added exposure shifted the tones to the right of the histogram, raising the highlights to the threshold of pure white without blowing out the brightest whites to pure white.
Post-capture Techniques
After importing into Lightroom, I immediately cropped the image to remove the unsharp foreground raspberry canes and took a slight bit off the top to avoid the distraction of the sky. I don’t usually start with cropping except I had pre-visualized the image this way when composing in field. White balance was fairly accurate with only a slight tint change of 6 towards green.
As you see in the original capture, the tree branches and snow have a “mushy” look to them, so my next move was to raise the contrast – but not with the Contrast slider. Instead, I increased the exposure by +0.5 which also meant a small amount of Recovery was needed to prevent snow becoming pure white. The Black Point was then increased to 20 to bring the greys back down. In doing so, the image became a bit too over-saturated, so Saturation was reduced by 10.
December Photo Newsletter is hot off the press!
This Month’s Article
It’s that time of year again – time to look back over the past 12 months to reflect on what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve left undone. I’m going to do a little of that here, but with a twist.
One of the great features of Lightroom, besides its intuitive Develop, Web, Print and Slideshow modules, is the Metadata section of the Library Module. I’ve been accused of over-analyzing situations, but this is one of those times when I think it’s helpful to throw a bit of analysis into an area that we’ve never really been able to before.
Up until the release of photo library applications like Aperture and Lightroom, photographers could only get a rough idea of “how” they shoot – the lens or focal length and aperture used most often. Now, that data can be quantified.
Read on >> luxBorealis December Photo Newsletter
November Photo Newsletter
Have a look at the November Photo Newsletter. You will find the second part of the article on exposure where I talk about the advantages of checking the histogram and highlight clipping warnings. Also I announce the two dates and locations for my Winter Nature Photography workshops: Jan 15 and Feb 12, 2011.
You’ll find it HERE – which is http://www.luxborealis.com/newsletter/2010-11-luxBorealisNovNews.pdf
Pushing Yourself – Visually
This past Saturday morning I led my Landscape Photography class on a morning field session down in the hamilton Beach area. We started off right under the Skyway Bridge at the canal leading from Burlington Bay to Lake Ontario – not the prettiest place at the best of times and this was October 30th: grey skies with the temperature at about 3°C, and few leaves left on the few trees in the area which was mostly aged cement and steel.
“Why are we here?” was the first and often-repeated question.
I believe that if you want to stretch your vision, you must work in visually challenging places. Once you have the technique down, it is relatively easy to make great landscapes in beautiful places. But are they visually dynamic images? Perhaps, if you have learned to create visually dynamic images. That only happens when you have truly challenged yourself.
What do I mean by “visually dynamic images”. These are images that visually “pop”. Images that show a different perspective, a different way of seeing. Images that make use of visual elements in the landscape and portray them in a creative way.
You can do all this in pretty places, but often we don’t because we are not forced to. There are plenty of beautiful photos that you can take just by standing there. Visually dynamic images often require a different perspective, a perspective that we may not consider if we are busy capturing the obvious.
I try to get photographers to think in terms of good, better and best. In a beautiful place, you can take good to better photos without working very hard, but what about the best photos – they are the ones that require a new and different perspective.
Going to a location that is visually challenging to begin with forces you to go beyond the obvious because the obvious is not very photogenic. Consider it a “sketching” outing: you may not come away with a photo contest winner, but what you are doing is exercising your brain, forcing it to see beyond the obvious. I tell my students that this is the practice that allows you to hone your visual skills so that when you get to that grand location, your images will be well beyond the snapshots everyone else is taking.
While I generally prefer to photograph alone, in this case it helps to go in a group so that you can feed off the different ideas and perspectives that others think of.
So, find a nearby location that is not visually stimulating and see what you come up with. Try going back more than once at different times of day and throughout the seasons.After a couple of years of this I will bet that you have more than few images worthy of showing.
Salzburg, Austria Stock Photos uploaded
I’ve just uploaded stock photos of Salzburg, Austria. What a beautiful city – historical buildings with lovely gardens and everything “Mozart” or “Sound of Music”. – Enjoy the pics!
luxBorealis Blog 