Early morning sun

pgriz · Jan 21, 2015

It's a cold -19C outside the window. The early morning sun is filtering through the trees and illuminating the vestiges of last year's garden. Another couple of months before we can turn our thoughts to spring and green and warmth. Just a few days ago, the temperature was above freezing, and the snow surface was quite soft, but once the temperature plummeted, the ruts and footprints and shapes were encased in ice. Generally, I am OK with winter, being able to cross-country ski or walk, but this years very rapid swings of temperature have essentially ruined the trails and put a hard, uneven crust on the snow - not thick enough to support a person's weight, but enough to make each step in "fresh" snow laborious and occasionally treacherous. Anyways, here's the garden shot. I took a few, but the one with the sunlight was somewhat more encouraging.

Nettles · Jan 21, 2015

I really like this. Very effective.

W.Y.Photo · Jan 21, 2015

A little less depth of field and I would have sworn those were tall trees and not small plants.

pgriz · Jan 21, 2015

Nettles said:
I really like this. Very effective.

Thank you, Nettles. The cold and weather have been a bit of a dog's breakfast, and I really don't like being outside when it's both cold and windy. So these will have to do until the weather improves.

W.Y.Photo said:
A little less depth of field and I would have sworn those were tall trees and not small plants.

Thank you, W.Y.Photo: I didn't see that view of it until you mentioned it. Might have to explore that idea, since we have several of these poking up in different parts of the garden. I did take a few shots with a thin DOF, but I didn't use the DOF to isolate the plants, so something to look at again.

Rick58 · Jan 22, 2015

Really nice Paul. Love the colors.

Mike Lamb · Jan 22, 2015

The weeds do look like trees. Cool. I would sharpen this up some.

weepete · Jan 22, 2015

Beautiful light there mate, that's a lovely capture.

JustJazzie · Jan 22, 2015

Beautiful light! I'm loving the stripes created by the shade and Sun (yellow and blue) !!

bribrius · Jan 22, 2015

nice. the flower placement is striking me as a little awkward. Not really on the third line, not really in one of the corners. And one of the holes in the snow seem to be cut off a little. still a really nice photo and all pre-formentioned could be personal preference. Edit: Looking again, i guess it is on the third line, or at least real close to it. my mistake.

pgriz · Jan 22, 2015

Rick58 said:
Really nice Paul. Love the colors.

Thanks, Rick. One of our houseguests asked me why I was photographing essentially "nothing". I told him the light was very nice and when the colour is nice, I really needed to take advantage of it.

Mike Lamb said:
The weeds do look like trees. Cool. I would sharpen this up some.

Thanks, Mike. Now this is a problem. I have the identical photo on one monitor, on my editing program and it looks sharp enough to leave slivers. The EXACT same photo updoaded to TPF is rather dull and visually mushy. Not the first time I saw that. So I don't know if the forum software does something when it displays the JPG. If you know how to prevent it from "mushifying" my sharp images, I'm all ears.

weepete said:
Beautiful light there mate, that's a lovely capture.

Thanks, Pete. Yep, that's why I got the camera out - we need to respect beautiful light, otherwise it may decide not to flaunt itself in front of us.

JustJazzie said:
Beautiful light! I'm loving the stripes created by the shade and Sun (yellow and blue) !!

Thanks, Jazzie. Had to play a little with the colour balance so that it wasn't TOO blue or TOO orange - I think I got it about right. And yellow/blue are nice complimentary colours.

bribrius said:
nice. the flower placement is striking me as a little awkward. Not really on the third line, not really in one of the corners. And one of the holes in the snow seem to be cut off a little. still a really nice photo and all pre-formentioned could be personal preference. Edit: Looking again, i guess it is on the third line, or at least real close to it. my mistake.

Thanks, Brian. The posted image is a slight crop - I played a bit with the lines, not so much to use the "rule" of thirds, but to get something that looked balanced to my eye. No hard and fast rules here - I go by what feels right.