Weekly Photo Challenge: State of Mind

It’s late winter here, what to me is the hardest time of year.  I had an unexpected day off in the form of a snow day this past week.  I was up early as usual, but didn’t have to stick with my usual schedule.  I took advantage of this change by taking photos of the storm that was blowing outside:

ISO 800 50mm f/7.1 1/100

This week’s photo challenge is to choose a photo that reflects your state of mind, and I chose this one.  It’s pretty dark here, but what drew me to create this image was the light, the almost ethereal glow of early morning in a snowstorm.  This photo is actually an HDR image, One of the original exposures is just below. I used HDR to bring out the definition of the house and the trees.  I also think it helped the photo glow a bit more.  That to me, is the strength of HDR, you really can bring out a lot by using even just three exposures and combining them into one image.

ISO 800 50mm f/7.1 1/100

It’s not all doom and gloom here, it’s just the start of Spring, so this day was followed by a very warm and sunny day, but for me, this was the image that reflected the mood of the week.

How are things where you are, is the weather turbulent there as well?  What do you think of my edit? are you a fan of HDR, or not so much?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Still

This past weekend when I awoke to a fresh layer of snow on the ground, I thought, “Great now I don’t have to do any running around! ” I was very wrong about that, none of the activities we were scheduled for were cancelled.  So instead, we actually had one more thing to do, clear the driveway.  But before I got to shoveling snow I took some photos, including this one:

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/5 1/500

This photo is an HDR image.  I like using HDR in scenes like this to capture as much detail as possible.  The original images I shot handheld.  I used a high shutter speed to stop any motion.  In this case I used an f-stop of f/5 to blur the background some but not entirely.  I also chose an ISO of 160 because I knew I could go pretty low, but I did want to make sure I could still capture the detail of the shadows.  Here is the original middle exposure:

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/5 1/500

This post was written in part as a response to the theme, still, over at Where’s My Backpack?  Even though I had to do a lot of running around, the first thing I did that day was to appreciate the stillness that a fresh snow brings.

So, how about you, doing a lot of running around lately? What do you think of the photo, does it say “still” to you?  Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and mirrors or anything that is illusion.  Now that’s an interesting theme provided this week over at Where’s My backpack?.  Last week it was Spring, but it seemed like an illusion considering I took this photo:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/8 1/100

In a way the photo itself is an illusion.  It is an HDR image that I created in Photomatix.  I like processing snow photos in HDR.  Snow is difficult to photograph and I think HDR helps give it a bit of boost.

So, I didn’t travel far to get this photo, but sometimes when the weather is bad, it is nice to stay close to home.

A Quiet Moment for your Monday

I took this shot a few weeks ago for my digital photography class.  The assignment was to show a fore-, middle-, and background:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/7.1 1/30

Even though it was pretty cold when I shot this photo, I found it very soothing.  I hope you do as well.

The only “technical” thing I did with this shot was use a tripod.  In this case the tripod not only made it possible to have a lower shutter speed but also made it easier to compose the shot in camera.

Cheers!

Freezing on Friday

Well, we got some snow and ice yesterday.  That meant that my bird feeders were busier than usual.

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/7.1 1/200

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/4 1/200

I used my Canon 50D with a 50mm lens to get these shots.  I did stay inside, we have some nice windows by the bird feeders so that we can enjoy the birds without bothering them too much.  I shot both using AWB, but then edited them later in Aperture.  Both pictures have been cropped.  The bird looking to the sky has been bumped up one exposure stop in post editing.  The bird under the bush I just used the auto adjust function for white balance.

Today is forecasted to be another cold one here, so I am expecting a lot of bird visitors.

Cheers!

Mini-landscape in Black and White

For several days it has been pretty cold here.  We have a bit of snow on the ground that is just hanging around, so I used it to make this photo:

This is the edited version, see the other photo for exif data

Here is the original photo:

ISO 125 50mm -0.33 f/10 1/500

While I was shooting I was thinking that I was going to do an HDR version, so I was shooting using a bracketed exposure.  I did use a tripod as well. The original photo that you see above is my middle exposure, so I had a lighter and a darker image as well.  I used those three in Photomatix to make the final image.  I also used a fast shutter speed to deal with the wind that was moving the grass a bit.  I set my camera to a low ISO and used “shade” as my white balance setting to get a better white color and detail in the snow.

I had in mind that I wanted to create a black and white photo that was a little bit abstract. When I loaded my bracketed photos into Photomatix, I felt that the black and white artistic setting was closest to what I was after.  I put the HDR version I created back into Aperture for some final editing.  I cropped the image and also sharpened it a bit.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section.

Cheers!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming

The theme of the weekly photo challenge is dreaming.  Where I am I think we are all dreaming of cooler weather, so here is one from this past winter:

ISO 800 135mm f/5.6 1/10

Cheers!