Dog Days of Winter
I've been going through a lull, experiencing a bit of difficulty finding new places and compositions in the nearby area. The cold weather is behind us, temperatures hovering between 1C and -10C, the snow is slowly melting down, but Spring is still a ways off and except for a few bald eagles the birds haven't begun to return. I feel like I'm in a bit of a limbo. So thank goodness for dogs, they are almost always in a good mood.
Here's a shot direct from limbo that kind of conveys what I mean. I think structurally it's a decent composition, but would look better when the green returns, or if the sky were more dynamic.
While I was out that day I noticed what looked like huge kites over a rise. They made for a nice addition of colour to an otherwise grey day:
It turns out they were ski-sails: in the open field above people were skiing back and forth using the sails to get up to a pretty good clip. But by the time I found this out they were packing up.
We then had a serious dump of snow: several inches of wet heavy stuff from Colorado, more than we'd had all year so far, the kind of snow that bends and breaks tree limbs. After it ended I went out in the evening to see what I could find. I rather like this next one for the clouds (the tail end of the storm) and star emerging above the tracks:
And a couple in B&W, trying to capture the contrast of the fresh snow on everything.
The last one was hand-held at 1/2 second, with ISO 3200, so it's a bit grainy. I was on a slope and couldn't get the tripod high enough. I just liked the almost yin-yang curve of it.
Then it was time to let the dogs out. The little one has a hard time keeping from getting crusted over, but he seems to love it:
Squirrel!
There's surely a mouse in here!
Tiny cheetah...
But sometimes he gets carried through the deeper stuff:
His larger friend loves to rough-house with my son:
...or chase imaginary deer:
...or imaginary rabbits:
Lookout!
It's a lot of fun to get these shots. The camera can be set up with several custom user settings, for wildlife and action I have it defaulted to 1/1000 second, f5.6, and a floating ISO. It seems to work pretty well, and I can concentrate on framing.
I spent the next day up at Helca park, on trails nobody has walked on all winter. The snow was deep, so it was a bit of a struggle, but it was fascinating to see all the animal tracks everywhere. It would be a good place to set up a blind, or hunker down in a camouflage parka. There were wolf and fox tracks, possible otter tracks, definitely raccoon and beaver tracks, along with the usual mice and deer.
Landscape-wise, however, was a different story. The sky was brilliant blue all day, but the terrain is wide open and flat, as the trails run through a marsh next to the lake. Barely a feature to be seen, and the best I managed was this:
By the end of the day I was rather frustrated, and out of desperation, or petulance, or desperate petulance, tried a blurred shot of the trail. I've seen other people do this with good effect. It's a bit surreal, but I think it's a reasonable start:
I don't know that I will do more of this style, but with right colour and light it could be interesting. At least it was something to try when I was out of ideas.
That's it for now. I have a new wide-angle lens which is a huge improvement to the one I had, so I'm eager to get out with it. And the bald eagles seem to be heading back, so perhaps I'll get some luck with the birds. Cheers!
