Monday, February 04, 2008

Winter wonderland

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It seems I get the photog itch a lot in the winter. Just about this time last year I posted pics of the killer ice storm that snapped trees off all over town and killed power for millions in the midwest. That was far from pretty... more like a photoessay of destruction. This year things are different....

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Rather than an ice storm, 2008 kicked off with a beautiful snowstorm... 6 thick fluffy inches of the stuff!!! Um... not that you can see it in these top 2 pics, but the next one down, yeah....

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Tonight it was a balmy 50 degrees or so (not sure exactly, but I wasn't wearing a coat when I snapped these shots). With piles of snow still all over everything, that makes for a lot of mist. Which makes for great photography! If you care to see some of the latest shots I've been taking, check out the first 3 pages of my Flickr site. To see the big version of a picture, first click ont the thumbnail to open the medium size, then click on "All Sizes" along the top.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yellowsky is my favorite...and your powerline photos are great!

Darkmatters said...

Thanks Grant!

Shelley Noble said...

These shots are spectacular, Mike. Is that a moon rise or dawn?!

Darkmatters said...

Thank ya!! All these shots were taken in the pitch black of night, about 3:00 am or so. Long exposure is my friend! It does some really cool things to whatever little scraps of light are there, brings out some crazy colors in them. The shots with the strange looking fuzzy light sources were thansk to a very heavy mist.

If you checked in the last few days and saw the shots of the brisck walkway and surrounding areas in the yard, those are the first shots (digital) I've taken so far that weren't in the middle of the night. I took them in the pre-sunrise twilight. I find straight undiluted sunlight is incredibly dull and boring.... any atmospheric effect that filters or distorts it (night, mist, clouds, rain, snow etc) make it far more interesting.

Darkmatters said...

Wow, all that babble and I really didn't explain what I was trying to....

You asked about a moonrise or dawn shot.... I'm guessing you mean the top pic on the blog? The yellow sky? It's neither... it was actually just a faintly grey sky, almost black, and the long exposure brought out that yellow color and brightened it up significantly. These night shots can be weird, because for some of them I don't really know what I'm gonna get. The last shot above for instance.... that area was pitch black, with only faint very dim visibility, but I just aimed the camera and took the shot, then it showed me what I had got. But of course the little LCD on the camera doesn't show you much, and I really didn't know what it loked like till I downloded it to iPhoto.

The fuzzy light sources visible in the 3 shots above were just yard lights of neighbors, and lights coming from windows. Came out looking pretty cool. I had let the dog out and saw all this heavy dense fog, and got excited and ran for the camera.