Arriving too soon

The difference a day makes. Hopefully the snow will melt again and let the flowers and birds enjoy the spring.



Poor guy!

Branches

Impatiently waiting for the switchover.

Trees covered

Leaves and snow.

Snowy burning bush

Some snow from this season.

Plus some colour.

I haven't been posting many (any?) snowy photos from this year. Seems, I never want to post photos of current seasons, and end up posting the opposite of what we're experiencing.

Winter scenes

Back to posting after an extended break.

Feathery companions helping me get through the winter blahs

More house sparrows in the snow!

Birds in the snow

Winter walk

Some scenes from a winter walk at Old Quarry Trail on the weekend.























Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to post some of my favourite photos taken in 2011. I was consolidating and updating photo files the other day and realized how few I've posted. This is a good way to work through the files and enjoy the moments again. I'm starting tomorrow with January 2011, and eager to get into the spring months - missing the colour these days!

Other odds and ends -- I don't have a social media plan, that is whenever a new enterprise starts up and I think it's interesting I join (e.g., twitter, tumbler, g+, Instagram, etc.). The other day I was thinking about it, and I find it all overwhelming! I'm not sure where to post, when/how often to post, what to post to each etc. I'm going to have to figure out a way to use these better, and hopefully not feel so scattered with them all. If any of you have any helpful advice about how you manage all these accounts, I'd love to hear it!

Winter

Some random winter scenes. It was slow in coming, but winter is most definitely here.

Also, the long blog dry spell is over. Hope to get back to regular posting.

Snowy woods

Some good news: I received my D300 back from the shop. And so far, so good. It's like a new camera.

The Kitchen Window

Inside



Outside

Post-Christmas Ruminations

Well, all Christmases are over at last. The ornaments are packed away, though the tree is still standing. I'm going to miss the wonderful scent of pine that greats me each morning when I come downstairs. I can pretend that I live in a forest for a few minutes each day, ha!



In other news, the winter weather has returned to snow, which makes for a more pretty scene over the dreary rain. And the days have started to change as well: with each new one I've noticed that they are lasting a little bit longer than the one before. Joy!



And finally, my camera has gone off to Nikon for repairs. They told me it would take 4-6 weeks. So the old camera and I have become reacquainted, and with a wee bit of keeping-a-positive-attitude, we're getting along just fine. ;-)

Snowflakes

One of the upsides to a full day of the right type of snow, is pulling out the close-up lens and trying to photograph some snowflakes.





From past experimenting I've found that the snow has to be just the right consistency. Basically, dry and light so that each flake sits on top of the one below, creating small pockets of air.





Using an external light source, one can angle the light to reflect across the plane of the snowflake, causing it to shine.





Or to catch edges, angles and curves by directing the light to the side of a pile of snow.



I've never had any luck doing this when the snow is heavy (big, wet flakes), dense, well-packed, old (not fresh), or during the day. As for technical bits, for all these photos I used my old camera, the D70s (I've been having some shutter trouble with the D300 lately), my trusty old Sigma 50mmƒ2.8 lens and a basic desk lamp with a bendable neck. As for camera settings, I used manual focus, manual exposure with aperture set at ƒ5.6, shutter speed based on the internal light meter and iso at 200. All were processed in Lightroom. The blue tint added by setting the white balance to tungsten then adjusting the temperature (blue/yellow slider) to the right a tad.



Here are some I took a few years ago: