A Little of This and That
I feel like I've hit a plateau. Perhaps it's feeling I have to work quickly to keep my fingers from going numb, but I find when I get home and review the images, I'm always seeing things I should have noticed or accounted for. So this post might be more about what's wrong than right. It's still good to get out.
Dawn comes late these days, you can almost sleep in, and still get somewhere before the sun lights up the sky. I drove downtown to make the trip even shorter, and ended up with several pictures of dawn over the Forks.
So what's wrong with this one? No complaints about the sky, it was stunning, it what makes getting up early worth it :) But the foreground subject is too dark and dull and heavy.
There's a love seat on the ice in the background, and evidence of a party around it, but I couldn't make using that as a foreground work at all.
Looking south, the sky was impressive, and I thought the contrast between the pink sky and the dark exhaust from the hospital was interesting. This time there isn't really a foreground at all, but at least the leading lines seem to work.
I do like this next one, as the colours reversed: the sky and clouds to a more normal daytime colour, while the exhaust gets its first glimpse of the sun. Nothing fancy here, just a standard Rule of Thirds composition.
While we're in the urban environment, I took a long walk one evening with the intention of focusing on black and white at night. I think a few turned out alright. This first is framed poorly, I should have gotten lower:
The next two are alright, but would be better I think without the starburst effect. I'm not sure yet how to get around that. It comes from using F16, which is needed for depth of field. It would go away if I exposed for the lights, but then everything else would be too dark. I'll have to experiment more. Anyway, one nice side effect of the gloomy weather we'd been having is that the sky is fairly bright, so offsets the silhouettes nicely:
Away from the urban environment, I've returned a couple times to Pine Point trail. There are three sets of rapids on the trail, I wasn't sure if they froze over. I guess if they do it hasn't been cold enough, because:
This next one is kind of framed backwards. If you follow the "rules", you're supposed to compose so the eye follows the action. I liked the expanse of stillness before the "plunge", but I'm not sure it works:
Along the hike I found an icicle surrounding some frozen ferns. The icicle is on the north face of a huge boulder, so these ferns will likely stay frozen until May:
Back to the water, I love how and where the ice forms. This picture breaks every rule, having the subject smack in the middle:
Now I'm writing about it, I have a couple ideas how to frame it better. One of the nice things about revisiting places is you get another chance. Plus, the light is always different.
As the sun set and I had less light to work with, I found myself making longer exposures, which revealed some interesting patterns in the water flow. After trying a few different compositions, I think this one worked out best, like a galaxy in the water:
And speaking of galaxies...on the way home after sunset the sky cleared right up, so I detoured to an open field at Bird's Hill Park to see if I could catch some stars. The Pleiades are upper right, with Taurus below (the sideways V), and the arc of Orion's bow near the horizon. You're seeing a JPG, so the full detail isn't present, but it gives an idea:
Apparently there's a special gizmo I can get that helps rotate the camera to prevent the star trails that show up once your exposure is longer than about 10 seconds, something to look into because it's kind of fun.
I hope everybody has a warm and happy holiday season!
