Winter is here for sure, as if there were any doubts. With temperatures well below freezing for several days – into the low teens at night – the lakes have frozen, and frequent flurries have kept snow intact at the higher elevations. Since yesterday finally got warm enough to venture out, I headed up to Lackawanna State Park to see if anything was worth shooting.
Shooting into the sun is a challenge all its own, and doubly so with snow on the ground, reflecting the light all over. There’s no way to balance the dynamic range in a shot like this, short of HDR processing. I didn’t even bother trying, instead knocking the exposure down in favor of the sun. The result is an accentuation of the golden afternoon light, and some incredible capture of snow detail that I’m very happy with.
Without a strong raking light, snow texture is very hard to capture. That uniform blanket of white makes it easier to work with an eye to minimalism, however, as single details jump out at you. This is the sort of image I’m sure I’ll shoot several more times this winter – I’m always drawn to details in the ice, in this case a pressure ridge just large enough to push water up and melt a line in the snow. The dark ice helps give the snow some detail.
For me, this was the shot of the day. I’ve grown to really love bird photography, as a subset of wildlife photography in general. Chasing down bird photos is something I get excited about, especially when it’s a new bird that I haven’t photographed before. So finding a group of Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches feeding on bread chunks in a pine grove definitely got my attention. Experimenting, I threw the 7D into high-speed continuous mode and AI drive, focusing off the center AF point. It was a bit of spray & pray, with the birds flitting about, but I was able to get a couple of good shots. Here, I love the out-of-focus tree trunk in the background, with just the Nuthatch and his tree in sharp focus, all bathed in the warm afternoon light. Definitely the shot of the day.
