Winter Shots

Once again, it managed to snow literally all day long here yesterday. So I finally bit the bullet and went outside to do some photography anyway. Today is just partly cloudy, so I'm looking forwards to going on my architecture shoot (finally) in about an hour. I did, however, get one reasonably good shot during the snowy weather yesterday. I was out at the foot of my driveway, shooting macros of trees that had snow and ice on them, but weren't completely covered.



click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/2.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 80
Handheld


The light was nice. Again, I love shooting when it's overcast. The light is so diffuse, yet it's plenty bright enough to get quick shutter speeds for handheld shooting.

I just barely increased the contrast on this, but left the brightness pretty much alone. In fact, I used a little trick to slide the left end of the histogram up a little; the exposure was correct, but the image was still too bright for my liking. Basically, you duplicate the layer, adjust the levels about twice as far as you want to end with, and then set the now posterized duplicate layer's opacity down to around 50%. It helps minimize the effects of the posterization without sacrificing your levels adjustment. A very subtle blue cast was added to aid in the "cold" feeling of the photo, and I desaturated about 40% to make the leaves looks dead...er.


Apparently the tube I have to attach to my camera in order to mount lenses and filters partially blocks my autofocus sensor. It still does a pretty good job when there's this much light, but especially for macro shots, I try to use manual focus. Unfortunately, it was so bloody cold outside that I didn't feel like playing around with focus on my own. The resulting image isn't tack-sharp, but it's an acceptable compromise. I couldn't stay out too long or else my lens would get snow on it, which is not only annoying to clean up, but gets in the way of the photo, too.