Icy Twig

Cropped a slightly sharpened. I really liked the shallow depth of field here, so I enhanced it as I did with Pretty In Pink a few days ago.

Sunset on the go

This photo was taken through a dirty bus window (thus the spots). This is the result of burying you good camera at the bottom of your bag! 

This photo was a guinea pig for using the Aviary app on my phone to edit a picture. Adjusting contrast,  brightness, at saturation were incredibly simple. For quick edits, I'm already in love.

Pros: surprisingly sharp - I was expecting blurry since we were charging down the highway at 110+ km/hr

Cons: spots spots spots. Tilted horizon - or maybe that's just hills that make it look that way, but still. a little bit ick.

Winter Berries

I know I've shared something similar before, but I really love the contrast of bright berries on a snowy background. So here's another! This is also from when I was travelling all over the countryside. I took a little break to admire these beautiful berries.

I'm not sure how well my attempts at editing this one worked. In trying to brighten all the details, I think I may have made it a bit grainy or pixelated. I did crop it quite a bit, trying to take in to account some of the things we were told after the last competition. I also tried cloning out a few little dark items from the snow, because they were distracting without contributing anything.

Snow Loop

I traipsed miles in the fall and early winter, trying to accomplish a crazy, self-assigned task. In the process, I saw some neat things - like this!

This loops of snow was just hanging off a retaining wall. I have no idea how it formed, but I thought (and still think!) it looked really neat.

Winter in the city

I saw this as I was walking, and couldn't resist grabbing the shot!

Believe it or not, this was actually a regular city sidewalk, around midday on the weekend. I was surprised at how many places had no footprints yet. In retrospect, it would have been better if I had caught sight slightly sooner, to eliminate the road in the top left, but otherwise it's a nearly perfectly smooth snow path.

This was taken with my cell phone, the only camera I had with me at the time. Not bad!

Snow in a tree

This picture was taken through a not-very-clean window, which affects the sides a bit, but I found a clear enough spot for the important part of the image. However, because of the angle of the tree branch, there was no where else to go to capture this image. I'm amazed by how much snow is balanced on such a thin branch, and I've been eyeing this image for days!

For this image, I tried to take some advice from yesterday's post about cropping, as well as from a book I've been reading where the author talks about cutting out the clutter. This image would be more powerful without the trees in the back, but that just wasn't an option. However, I did zoom in (instead of cropping after) to clear away all the rest of this particular tree's branches - and I think it is a better picture than if I had left it all in there!

Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 800, aperture 5.0 and 1/1000 exposure length, no flash.

That IS Fun!

This picture was taken to fulfil the "something fun" challenge.

This is a very nice ice sculpture, and I actually think it's easier to see the face in the picture than it is in real life. It's been unseasonably warm here, so the sculptures probably aren't faring quite as well as expected. So far, it just means the edges are a little softer than was perhaps intended, but the details are still clear.

Normally I would think the light pole behind the sculpture was a flaw in composition (although there's only so much you can do with an object you can't move), but in this case, the facets of the ice seem to pick up the colour of the pole, making the edges clearer. I like it!

Snow Cap

I took this one because of the perfect little snow cap on the solar light.

I love it because of the little spec of pink at the back - some freeze-dried flowers that weren't completely hidden by the snow. It's the only real colour in this image, as all the rest is white, greys, or browns. I can't really pin what I like, but I do. Click on it to see it larger, and let me know if you like it too!

Snowfall

The snow accumulates and hangs off our eaves trough in very strange ways.

This was taken from below, and on the left is the bottom of the eaves trough (dark) and a bit of the roof (light). On the right is actually sky - it was full dark by the time I went out to take pictures, which I think works really well to contrast the snow. Some shots I took the next day, during the daylight, are much less clear because there is just too much light reflecting off the snow. A few shadows are good! I like how this image captured the lumps and bumps that formed as the snow accumulated, as well as the striations horizontally.