Happy Winter

Happy winter, everybody! To celebrate the solstice, as well as the lack of cloud cover this morning, I did some picture-taking this morning, at Magnuson and Hamlin Parks. Magnuson wasn't as frosty as I'd hoped, but there were still some cool-looking plants; the meadow area of Hamlin, on the other hand, saw very heavily frosted.

I really like the way this sunrise one turned out. I got pretty low to the ground and close to the trees. I got the sun to look like that (with the rays coming out) by using a relatively narrow aperture (f/20). I also like how there is still tonal definition in the grass; I didn't even use a filter! The blurry black thing in the top middle is some piece of dust or something that got on my sensor. By the time I'd cleaned it off, the sunrise was gone and I had to accept the pictures I already had.

In this next one, I liked the way the sun was hitting the water on these trees. I turned my camera's D-Lighting feature off (this helps equalize light contrast). The higher contrast brought out the water better.

I've taken cooler pictures of frosty Queen Anne's Lace than this next one; still, it worked okay. A bit on the soft side, due to a very slight breeze and the fact that I was still working with a pretty slow shutter speed (something like 1/30). Some creative color adjustments might help bring the frost out a bit more.

At Hamlin, I wanted to capture frost on Scotch Broom plants. These three are my best. The last two are the same shot; I couldn't decide which focus point I liked better so I decided I'd post both.

Finally, I thought this plant looked really cool in the frost. I believe it is Canada goldenrod. The pictures I got weren't the best, but thus is the nature of experimentation. It'll definitely be worth another try the next time it is frosty.

Happy Winter!!