28 Jan 13. With the inversion layer that hung around here for the better part of two weeks, we had some rather interesting temperature layers that made for higher level melting and lower level freezing. The day trip during which we went looking for the eagles saw temps around 40°F at 5K feet and 28°F at 4K feet. So snow melting at higher levels was running off and refreezing at lower levels. Made for some very nice ice sculptures. Perhaps what one might expect to see in a florist's shop as opposed to the kind of ice sculptures you see on a cruise or at a wedding. These were located right beside the road and as such were generally in the shade, but every so often we came upon a grouping where the sunlight was filtering through the trees and nicely illuminating the subjects. This looks to be a portion of a cedar branch that has been captured by the process. Above it was a series of rather large icicles which may be the subject of another mailing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.
29 Jan 13. Working our way along Hwy 20 I stopped now and then to take in what I thought might make for a nice image. The gray skies with patches of blue made for a nice background for the bare trees and the bluish-green water. There was sufficient light to offer a choice of several equivalent exposure combinations so I picked a set to give adequate depth and lack of movement, both on my part and the subject's. The original was a wee bit dark in the trees on the far bank, so I had to selectively lighten that small area. Other than that, the shot was pretty well balanced exposure wise. Converting it to B&W offered a couple of challenges, especially in the small tree branches at the top of the tree. After solving that problem the image was as close as I was going to get it without printing it on the appropriate paper, the kind of which I'm still trying to remember. Looking through an old Kodak spiral bound lab book today I came across a paper that was close to what I want, Kodak Medalist Paper J, but still not the exact thing. After saving out the image and downsizing it the way I always do for the small file size, the tree top was a mess so, I had to take the large image into a separate program made for doing nothing but re-sizing. This time it worked. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.
30 Jan 13. I was mortified this evening when a good friend commented on the tire tracks in yesterday's image that I had totally missed, not only when I shot the image, but while I was processing it and during my sending it out, so we'll shift gears and go somewhere else while I review all those images taken on that trip to make certain I didn't overlook even more. Just down the road in front of our property about 1/2 of a mile is a small farm, The Broken Earth Farm, that grows organic farm crops ( as opposed to synthetic ones I guess ) and has a few old farm implements either "decorating" the area or simply left there when they were no longer of use. Among them is an old stove, or at least portions of an old stove. It is in very bad shape, what there is of it, but beautifully rusted; it was the rust that initially caught my eye. I tried several different approaches to capturing it but only one angle worked, and that is what I'm sharing here. I've shot it very tight, and were it not for a couple of handles lying at the bottom corner, it is unlikely that it could be identified as a stove. I've exaggerated the texture of the rust to bring out its beautiful colors, and cropped out some distractions at the top, but other than that it is straight out of the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 7.1 with fill flash.
