Snow topped trees

[Robert Watcher]

Stunningly beautiful morning - stark trees loaded with fluffy snow against a soft blue sky. My artistic interpretations.

 

[Asher Kelman]

In this image. You have presented it as all white which is very dramatic. However, in looking closely at the file, there’s a lot of interesting dete in the branches of the tree they I expect will be obvious if you print it large.

On this small jpg, that wonderful detail is lost but it’s still amazing!

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

Thanks Asher. This image is an artistic expression. I don’t want detail in the image - just a soft fluffy ball of cotton / soft white lambs wool appearance with muted sky tones. That was the essence of how I felt when I saw the large forest of trees off in the distance across a field, while driving through the countryside this morning.

The highlights have been brought down a little and shadows brought up to soften them for the most part. A heavy Gaussian blur over the whole image creates the mood and a linear lens blur not affecting the tree line, smears most of the sky and foreground snow. My wife sent a message after she saw it, that she loves it —— and so I printed out an 11x17 for above the coffee counter in our kitchen.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks Asher. This image is an artistic expression. I don’t want detail in the image - just a soft fluffy ball of cotton / soft white lambs wool appearance with muted sky tones. That was the essence of how I felt when I saw the large forest of trees off in the distance across a field, while driving through the countryside this morning.

The highlights have been brought down a little and shadows brought up to soften them for the most part. A heavy Gaussian blur over the whole image creates the mood and a linear lens blur not affecting the tree line, smears most of the sky and foreground snow. My wife sent a message after she saw it, that she loves it —— and so I printed out an 11x17 for above the coffee counter in our kitchen.

Wonderful!

I like that you carve the image and don’t accept what the little men inside the camera thought was a great uniformly recorded image.

I believe it’s highly unlikely that a camera engineer can figure out what we find best expresses our feelings and the latter is the whole point of artistic photography!

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

This set of comparisons is a good reminder for me. Taking advantage of opportunities and making the effort - even when you don’t feel like it —- often pays off. The coldness, amount of snow, overall weather conditions haven’t changed since I looked out my living room window Tuesday morning and saw all trees around the house lined with white cotton against a beautiful smooth robins egg blue sky.

It took dressing up in heavy clothes, shovelling and salting the front stairs and sidewalk as well as removing a couple of feet of snow off of my car, and braving the icy snow covered roads - in order to drive a couple of kilometres out of town and see what I would come across to photograph with my camera.

My small camera bag is always in the car at my feet with an Olympus E-M10 and 80-300mm (equivalent) lens on it. When I turned it on, the camera was dead, but I always have a couple of extra batteries sitting in a charger that I charge in the car. Changing the battery worked.

I was pleased with the 3 results and enhanced them with an artistic touch when I got home. This morning I went back to the 3 locations - and while not perfectly capturing the exact scene - snapped the same camera and lens combo out my car window from roughly the same location as I did on Tuesday. Not only are the cotton covered trees changed, but the lighting in the bush areas is totally different. Both the shots from Tuesday and from today used in the comparison, are unprocessed jpegs straight from camera.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I think the very last picture might be a worth challenge to develop aggressively or subtly to bring out or conceal the shades of limitation on the clouds and foreground snow .