Driftwood in Snowdrift

It's funny how the different seasons cause one to see things differently.  The winter landscape can be rather stark, with the absence of leaves and many plants covered in snow.

Walking along the riverbed after a snowstorm, the wind and sun had exposed the top parts of driftwood among the rocks.  The textures and contrasts really stand out when all else is removed from your field of vision.

monochromatic landscape

A gray day with snow flurries is a perfect time for black and white landscape photography.

Walking along the riverbed, I found many pieces of driftwood that had interesting textures.  I grabbed this one and carried it to a bend in the river where the snow and ice formed interesting shapes among the rocks. 

After taking a few photos standing and kneeling, I held the camera a few inches off the ground, pointing it in the same direction and angle that I did in my other shots.  The wide angle causes the viewer's eye to start at the rocks and driftwood, and work upward into the rest of the landscape.

After I got home, I converted the image to black and white with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

Free Online Photo Editing

Maybe you haven't purchased image editing software yet, or maybe you're away from the computer that has it, but you've got some photos and you have access to the web.  What do you do?  I like picnik.com in these situations.  Since I carry my camera in the car all the time, it's not unusual to capture a great image on the way to work.  Eager to share it with the world before I get home, I'll upload it to picnik and edit it there.  Below are just a few examples of the many options available to you there.  

For this first image, I used picnik's auto-correct and sharpening functions.  It's a pretty true representation of the scene I saw.  Then, as I often do with snowy or cloudy scenes, I converted it to black and white:

 The image above applies an effect that picnik calls "lomo-ish."

The one below is using their "hdr" effect.

Timing is Everything!

 

Sometimes you get lucky.  The more you go out to shoot, the better your chances are of this happening.  It's a good idea to bring your camera with you all the time.  I started doing this about five years ago, and as a result have been able to capture some images that would otherwise exist only in my memory.

For the shot above, I was showing my folks around Marble, Colorado on an autumn afternoon.  We started driving back to my house when I saw a plane taxiing to one end of the small airstrip there.  There's very little activity at this strip, so I recognized this as a rare opportunity.  We pulled over at the far end, and I positioned myself so the plane would fly right over my head.  As the plane approached, I fired off half a dozen shots.  This is my favorite.

In an effort to capture the amazing colors of autumn in the mountains, I got up early every day for over two weeks and drove to the far side of Beaver Lake in Marble, Colorado.  On this particular morning, it was pretty clear when I left home, but some rain clouds were moving in quickly from the southwest.  The sun rose over the mountains to the east as the clouds and rain reached Marble, creating the conditions for these two photos.  The first is the light hitting the rain falling to the valley downstream.  The next one is the rainbow that formed when the rain reached the far side of the lake.  I especially like how the base of the rainbow is on the colorful mountainside aspen trees.

Clouds and Colors

A couple weeks past peak color, the mountainsides were still brilliant this year.  On this particular morning, the overnight rains left behind fog and low clouds that are always fun to photograph.  This shot was taken just below McClure Pass, in the Crystal River valley between Redstone and Marble, Colorado.