Some actual winter

As you’ve heard me whinge on about in the past few posts, this winter has been pretty dismal and non-wintery. Mostly bare ground and high temperatures. I think we got snow accumulation once in January and once in February. I’m typing this on March 3 and there is no snow in the yard, it’s around 50 degrees F and I’m feeling pretty bummed that what is normally one of my most productive times out with the camera hasn’t been.

When it snowed in February I knew it wouldn’t last so zipped out to my favorite spot on the Prairie river to check it out. Mostly I wanted to sit on the same rock as I did for the Fall Shots, but that wouldn’t work out exactly as you’ll see. On the way over I stopped for this and am glad I did. It’s a view of the Wisconsin river shoreline from a public boat launch. Wintery, but only on the surface since we have a full and open reflection instead of ice. I kind of like it for that unusual aspect. On my way home a few hours later, a lot of the snow had blown off and the light wasn’t nearly so gentle and warm.

As the sun came a bit higher, I was able to get a lot of contrast between shaded areas and sunny. One of my major peeves about snow photos is very blue shadows so I did my best to reduce that without it seeming too forced. Our eyes do naturally perceive blue in snow shadows so while I don’t think it’s entirely unnatural, the camera white balance pushes that even further. White balance management in the field and in post is critical to this not looking nuclear or cartoonish. Thoughts? Did I get it right?

Here’s another sunny look downstream this time and down off the bridge. This time I pushed the white balance very high into the warm range and got rid of the blue almost entirely. I should have used a polarizer here, but forgot since I was on some ice ledge and didn’t want to linger more than I had to. So I used a few techniques in Photoshop with luminosity masking and dodging and burning through that as a stencil. Also took out a distraction or two. I really like the tunnel aspect of all the leaning trees and branches. The light was fantastic.

As I made my way downstream, the snow started to fly off the trees with every breeze. Other than getting a neckful before remembering to put my hood up, it was a lot of fun and I like this instant of capture that I think shows that pretty well.

Of the little slices of the icy edges and rocks, this is the only one that works well. I was clear across the river on the opposite bank with the long lens. I used a polarizer to slow down the shutter speed a little bit, but not so much that you lose any sense of the water moving and the sound it makes. The yin/yang aspect of how I cropped it works I think.

Another oblique view of the river from the bank, but farther away. The way the ice formed over the fallen tree was pretty cool – it looks so flat you’d think it was a human-made bridge, but it’s really just a log. Critter bridge though! Unfortunately I didn’t notice this scene before I’d already walked through the spot (where I took the tunnel view looking downstream). Thought about using the remove tool or generative fill in Photoshop, but left it to just removing a few edge distractions. It’s an odd arrangement and composition, but I kept coming back to it, so here it is. It has some color, but not enough to be interesting and so I went with monochrome to preserve the geometry as the focus – all those intersecting lines and planes. I think it helps with taking your eyes through the depth in the scene as well. Using a medium telephoto at f7.1 helped compress the elements front to back and keep everything in the focus zone.

On to the main event, so to speak; the spot that I shot from in the fall. Kinda.

See all those ice ledges? That’s what I’d have had to walk on to get to the rock I sat on for the other shots. Nope. Where I did walk was shallow and through small boulders. The ones I used for positioning for the other shots were bigger and the ice much higher off the ground so I gave it a miss and stayed really close to the little island. Zoomed with my lens rather than my feet and the aspect isn’t quite the same, but it’s a good approximation.

The light was really changeable so I moved around a bit and took a few variations. This one doesn’t have the forked tree on the left that I used as a marker for the copy composition.

And this one had less warm sunlight in it so seemed a great candidate for a monochrome conversion. All of them have extensive masking in Lightroom to get things just right. I especially like to use several varieties to emphasize a light source that is already visible in the scene.

Eventually though, clouds moved in and as I made my way back to the car, I concentrated on finding small scenes on the forest floor and was so pleased to find lots of Club moss as you might remember from the post I did a few weeks back. If you missed it or want to see it again, click here.