IN THE FIELD: Frosty Windows

 

Spring may be right around the corner…at least according to the calendar. But just the other morning when I went outside to warm up the Jeep, Mother Nature said winter is still here. 

Luckily for me the sun had just risen above the horizon and I was able to capture this display of ice diamonds on the passenger window.  

 

 

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IN THE FIELD: Winter’s Icy Grip

This morning we, as did most folks in this part of the country, woke up to a bitterly cold morning. I’m sure it is not as cold here as it has been in other parts of the world, but it sure is chilly. I really feel for you folks that have a much colder climate.

I did find it interesting to see the outside temperature hovering at 0. We don’t usually get to see that number on the thermometer. Even the inside temperature is on the chilly side. As a fellow blogger noted, it is odd dressing in layers while inside. I agree.

You can see yesterday’s outside high temperature had made it up to 44 degrees. And then the cold front came through. The wind started howling around noon yesterday and continued through the night. It’s still blowing relentlessly, bringing the wind chill to somewhere around -22…give or take a few degrees. I think I’ll look through the archive for some summertime photos.

IN THE FIELD: Freezing

It’s been a bit on the chilly side where I live. In fact it hasn’t been above freezing for more than a week. Temperatures fall to the low teens at night and sometimes into the single digits. We’ve had a few snow storms and with a snow-covered landscape, it even looks cold outside.

While touring about in the new area in which we live, I passed by an old barn and a glint of light caught my eye. I went back for a second look to see what had flashed as I drove by. I pulled over next to the barn and discovered a large mass of brambles covered in ice climbing up the side of the structure. Sunlight was beaming through the ice creating a chandelier of huge proportions.

I had to find a way to get the shot. I only slipped once, okay twice, while I positioned myself, camera, and tripod in the shadow of the barn. It was the only way I could get the shot so the sun would shine through the ice and not directly into the lens.

Apparently the sun had melted some of the snow from the roof of the barn even though it has been so cold. As the meltwater would drip onto the vines it would then refreeze creating hundreds of of icicles.

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white balance Cloudy

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IN THE FIELD: The Heat Is On

We are in the midst of a heat wave where I live. For most of the week it’s been extremely humid with temperatures in the high 80’s to low 90‘s, with no relief coming anytime soon. When it is hot like this, I just want to stay inside and stick my face in a bowl of ice cubes.

Ice cubes? Hey….not a bad idea…and I might as well have some fun with the camera while I’m cooling off.

I started by putting a bunch of ice cubes in a glass bowl and placed it on the table. I mounted the camera on the tripod due to the low light levels indoors and the resulting slow shutter speeds. I took a few shots…the ice looked like ice…cool and refreshing, but it wasn’t very exciting.

Then I wondered what kind of effect I could create by illuminating the ice with some kind of light source. I used the flash, but the result wasn’t very dramatic. I even photographed the ice with various colors of acetate held in front of the flash. The ice took on some color, but it was too subtle for what I was trying to achieve.

I needed something more reflective to scatter the light among the ice cubes. So I turned up the volume on my thinking cap and remembered I had some battery-operated glow sticks. I dumped the ice cubes into a stainless mixing bowl, turned on the glow sticks and shoved them into the melting ice. The glow sticks were just the ticket.

This photo was not manipulated in any way. It is straight out of the can.

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ISO 400

cloudy WB

HOW TO: Back To Basics Snow

Capturing the pure white of snow or ice can be tricky depending on the available light, your camera settings, and how much snow or ice is in your composition.

Cameras don’t necessarily know what your intentions are. They record the image as an average based on the meter reading.

Camera meters are generally set to take a reading of the scene and convert it to an average of about 18% gray, or what is known as a medium tone. Snow and ice is not typically 18% gray, so the camera meter sees all this light and instructs the camera, or suggests to the user, to close down the aperture. Whoa…it’s bright…way to much light coming in here. If the photo is taken at this metered setting, typically the shot is under-exposed and the snow or ice turns blueish, especially if you have a lot of snow or ice in your composition.

But, it can be easier to capture what you are seeing through the viewfinder, and avoid underexposing your photos of snow and ice, with a few simple solutions.

If you are shooting in manual mode, and have the aperture set for the depth of field you want, you can adjust the shutter speed to overexpose from what the meter recommends by a stop or two. It may take some experimentation to get the results you want without overexposing so much that the snow or ice become blown out and there is no texture left.

You may also want to adjust your white balance to sunny, cloudy or even a custom setting, depending on the type of light available that day.

Another method, is to use exposure compensation which can be used in auto or manual mode. You can dial in as much or as little overexposure as you want, just be sure to set it back to zero when you are finished, otherwise all your subsequent photos will be overexposed.

If you want to evoke a cold feeling to the scene by letting the camera show the snow or ice with a blueish cast, and not add extra exposure, that’s ok too…you are the photographer, after all….and you get to choose.

 

IN THE FIELD: Frozen Waves

At this time of year in the part of the world where I live, protecting camera equipment from the cold winter weather is a priority. If the snow is blowing, I use a Rainsleeve to keep the snow off the camera and lens. I also carry a spare battery in my pants pocket to keep it warm, so when the battery in the camera begins to lose energy from exposure to the cold, I have a backup.

These are not hard things to do, allowing me the luxury to shoot throughout the year. And to capture not only larger scenics, but smaller seasonal vignettes.

This handrail was covered in snow which had begun to melt from the afternoon sun. When the temperature fell at night, the snow and water refroze into this formation that, to me, resembled waves on a beach.

When I took this photograph it was 21 degrees, sunny and windy. I had plenty of battery power…I just could have used warmer gloves.

IN THE FIELD: Winter Photo Adventures

My wife and I first met in the middle of the winter a few weeks before Christmas. A few of our first dates consisted of “photo excursions.” We would explore local parks, or the streets of the town where she lived, or just go for a drive and see what we could find.

On one frigid afternoon, we went for a drive down a country lane and came across a group of frozen ponds near the road. We thought we might find interesting patterns in the ice to photograph.

We parked the car in a safe spot and gathered up the camera bag and tripod and headed through the brambles towards the ponds. As we got closer to the ponds we noticed the ice resembled what we called a Star Wars landscape. Apparently, freeze thaw cycles caused the ice to lower and break on the protruding rocks.

We got some shots of ice crystals near the edge of the pond, and some overall shots of the surroundings. We began to experiment with exposure settings and colored filters normally used for black and white photography, trying to duplicate how an alien landscape would appear.

My sister had just given me a polarizer filter for Christmas and we thought we should try that one to see the effect. I got the filter out of the camera bag and tried to hand it to my wife (girl friend at the time). But both our hands were so cold, the hand-off was a complete failure in coordination.

That brand new, never-been-used filter, dropped to the ice, and slid out to the middle of the pond like a hockey puck. She was horrified. “Oh No! David, I can’t believe I dropped your brand new filter! Lordie, you must think I am a bumbling idiot!”

I reassured her several times that our impromptu hockey game was an accident. After a few moments of laughter and teasing, we went on a quest for a long stick and ventured out onto the ice to retrieve the filter.

Had we been wearing warmer gloves that day, the old adage “there really is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing” would not have come into play.

IN THE FIELD: The Archives

During the holiday season I took some time out to look through my film archives. I have thousands of slides in protective pages and in those little yellow boxes that came back from the processing lab. I didn’t review all of the slides, or I would still be at it come this time next year.

Back in the day, before digital cameras became commonplace, we used film cameras. And there were many types of film available, ranging from slow to medium speed (ISO 25-400) slide films to slow to fast speed (ISO 50-800) print films. Film had a quirky trait when exposed for long periods of time. When exposures started to reach the 30 second mark or less, depending on the film and light available, the film’s ability to render true colors would shift throughout the color spectrum. This was known as reciprocity failure and could be used to the photographer’s advantage if abstract images were the main goal. Or the photographer wanted to experiment.

The film I used for the photo in this post was Kodachrome 64. The aperture I used was probably f16 or f22 and the shutter speed was most likely around 25 seconds. Available light was minimal since the sun had already set and it was almost dark.

This photo is a small portion of an ice patch near the edge of a creek. I took several shots at various locations along the water’s edge. The color shift varied from frame to frame, depending on how long the exposures were. The rainbow lens flare in the upper corners of the frame may have been caused the light reflecting off the water. Because of the long exposure, the color of the ice shifted from white to blue, with spots of lavender, giving it a surreal look.

For me, the hardest thing about using film was waiting to see the results from the photo lab. Good or bad.