So far this month I haven't done any serious photography but have, as always, had the point and shoot in my pocket and ready to go. These were all shot with said camera, often at low resolutions and high ISOs. As I've written many times before the camera is more of a sketchpad than best primed canvas. I take a lot of photographs and make no apologies for that.
Weather wise we have had a lot of snow followed a run of 50 degree days. So if there is a theme with these it is snow - white snow, dirty snow and melting snow.
I did so some experimenting with the processing of some of these. I am still playing around with a lack of a sharp focus anywhere in the image and both muted and altered color. The black and white snow-scapes may look a shade underexposed but that is deliberate, they were shot at last light and I didn't want to light them up like Christmas trees.
Crossposted on my blog: February Photos | Minimalist Photography
The above image has been blurred slightly and the colors have been muted and the black increased slightly. For some reason this version looked much better than a black and white I made first.
I was happy to get this shot, not because it's a great shot (it's not) but because something that I predicted happened. A bus was on our left (behind the camera) and the sun was very low and I thought the windows might show through the shadow. We were moving at about 60mph so this one took a bit of timing!
Enough of the restrained treatments! this is over saturated and deliberately blurred. It may be gaudy but I just don't care! The complementary orange and blue thing gives added impact - for good or for bad.
This is a very noisy pic shot out of my studio/office door. 16x zoom used 4x optical which is good and 4x that digital which is bad but I couldn't be bothered to put my boots on. The efl was about 560mm. The pic is a good illustration of the squashing effect of a telephoto lens. The distance between the nearest car and the furthest one is much more than it appears in the picture. A wide angle lens has the opposite effect. Understanding this really helps to choose between a longer zoom or getting closer to the subject.
This is really experimental - not even worth listing the rules that I've broken. All I will say is that the snow here really is that disgusting shade of polluted.
Freight train from one of the steel mills. These can take up to 20 minutes to clear the crossing so it is a good time to get some pics. There si often some really well done graffiti on display as well. It was almost dark when this was shot.
This is the view from my sitting room. Long telephoto so it isn't as unpleasant as it looks here. This has not been altered much. The snow really is that icky and the Trinity Lutheran Church board is really that crappy. They are also very bad neighbors as that snow pile is actually on the sidewalk.
This was just a quick grabshot while we were out shopping.
Another false color gaudy one. At this stage of the winter a bit of color is good.
Back to something a little less gaudy.
I love signs for some reason. Not sure why but I find it really hard to pass one without taking a photograph of it. It really is a compulsion. I also have an obsession with nondescript purely functional cheap buildings and structures so gas stations are a perennial subject.
This is a rock in our yard with the snow melting around it - just caught my eye. Strong lines and different textures I suspect.
Hard to believe that this patch was under 2 foot of snow this time last week and now all that is left is this little patch of ice.