Challenge 24 - DigiSmile

digismile

Well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

While many of you are enjoying wonderful fall colours for your landscape shots, my fall time ended last weekend with a foot of snow! My shots of the Rockies for the previous challenge would have been perfect here ... Oh well.

So taking Andy's tips and advise on Winter shooting, out I went yesterday to wow you with pictures of snow ... white ... bland ... you can feel my excitement ... (Not) ...

So I drove around and headed into a park in our river valley. I run through this area all winter long, but I guess I'm too busy doing whatever to see the beauty around me. I was kind of surprised at the photos I got. I have tried a few in B/W for you B/W folk but the colour amongst the white was too nice!

Here's a few shots:













And I even took a few of the little things around me:








While I was shooting, a duck waddled all the way up and finally under my tripod! I guess he wanted to see what I was doing . He then decided that he wanted to be in most of my shots. He waddled back and forth over a half hour period. Sadly, you can see from the following pictures of his first approach that he doesn't have a left wing ...











All these pictures were taken with my wide angle, so he (she? don't know much about ducks) was VERY close.

Needless to say, I had a great time enjoying (winter) photography.

Brad

Sandy

Beautiful shots....snow? We do not have snow, or colorful leaves falling to the ground, I am still working on getting a great landscape. I think the first photo is beautful and I like the shots of the delicate leaves on the snow. I'm glad it is not snowing here, I'm a warm weather person. Sandy

ish

I like these two the best:

miketaylor01

i like number 5 the best of them all. I like how you framed the right side of the shot with the tree which itself is just asa interesting as the background. Good work. Very good series of shots though i must say. A successful afternoon. Keep up the good shots.

aero-nut

Quite a curious duck. I like the framing in the fourth pic. Nice job!Being in the desert, I don't get many oportunities to try snow shots, but I'm sure it's not easy.

digismile

What surprised me (at least at first) was how dark they were when I got home. I checked the histograms to make sure that the photos didn't get blown out, and shot RAW at -1/3 F-stops. I think I increased every photo by +.66 to 1.5. Thinking about it later, the camera was obviously metering the snow to be 10% gray.

So I probably didn't need to stop down. Just a note for those that MIGHT get snow sometime this century
Brad

aero-nut wrote:

Quite a curious duck. I like the framing in the fourth pic. Nice job!Being in the desert, I don't get many oportunities to try snow shots, but I'm sure it's not easy.

pathfinder

I love shooting in new snow - everything seems so clean and nice..... It is cool too


I like # 5 the best - the detail in the tree trunk is a great contrast to the background. I also like that the snow is neither blown out nor greyish. Good work. Well done. Too bad about the duck - unless you adopt it, it wil not survive the winter.

We don't have snow here yet, but I shot a few images last winter too....

lynnma

digismile wrote:

What surprised me (at least at first) was how dark they were when I got home. I checked the histograms to make sure that the photos didn't get blown out, and shot RAW at -1/3 F-stops. I think I increased every photo by +.66 to 1.5. Thinking about it later, the camera was obviously metering the snow to be 10% gray.

So I probably didn't need to stop down. Just a note for those that MIGHT get snow sometime this century
Brad

Hi Brad.. don't know if you saw this thread by Andy.. it's always useful to me:D
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=3167&highlight=winter+shots

by the way.. the shots are beautiful!!
Lynn

cletus

Have you tried #1 as a black and white???

digismile

Here's #1 as B/W. I'm wondering if the detail is too fine. I've played with curves to change the mids and shadow areas. Stll not sure if it works.


As well, I played around with grayscale Duotones, Tritones, Quadtones to see what the different effects might be, but once converted to this mode it would only let me save as PSD, TIFF, etc. and not jpeg. Can I change a tritone back to an RGB or grayscale and keep the grey effects?

Brad

cletus wrote:

Have you tried #1 as a black and white???

snapapple

I love these...
I love snow. But, it's more fun to visit than to live with. But, for this I might leave my bouganvillia in San Diego

My favorite is No. 4. - That duck, walking away from you, gives it just the right touch. Great stuff.

Sam

digismile wrote:

Well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

While many of you are enjoying wonderful fall colours for your landscape shots, my fall time ended last weekend with a foot of snow! My shots of the Rockies for the previous challenge would have been perfect here ... Oh well.

So taking Andy's tips and advise on Winter shooting, out I went yesterday to wow you with pictures of snow ... white ... bland ... you can feel my excitement ... (Not) ...

So I drove around and headed into a park in our river valley. I run through this area all winter long, but I guess I'm too busy doing whatever to see the beauty around me. I was kind of surprised at the photos I got. I have tried a few in B/W for you B/W folk but the colour amongst the white was too nice!

Here's a few shots:













Brad

Very nice! I like these two the best.

Question, What camera did you use? How did you achieve the depth of field in the second photo?

Thanks,

Sam

judyfuess

Great shots!! I like the second picture a lot!