Now that winter weather has indeed finally arrived, as Brent so aptly noted, it brought with it some great photo opportunities this past week. Here’s my perspective on the photo trip Brent and I took earlier this week.
First of all, sunrise. The winter sun may rise later than in summer, but I’m thinking I’ll go with the earlier time in exchange for some warmth! This was taken along Route 107 near Merli-Sarnoski Park in NE PA — temp about five degrees above zero. We came over a rise in the road and this scene presented itself — grabbed the camera, forgot about the hat and gloves.
I tried to get a view with the foreground illuminated, but I kept blowing out the sky — the main feature of the shot — so I opted to go with the silhouette foreground.
While looking for the sun, I couldn’t ignore the moon, shining over this group of trees on the opposite side of the road. I thought it captured the winter “look” in a way that complemented the starkness of the bare trees against the sky in the photo above.
Before leaving the highway, I turned around and took this shot of a fence post, the light rapidly growing warmer (though the temperature barely budged). I liked the warmth of the light on the rough texture of the post, with the shadow of the barbed wire falling across.
On to the lake at Merli-Sarnoski. The lake only recently froze over (don’t ask me how I know), but some small open patches offered an opportunity for a ground-level perspective. I finished with two shots. The first was of this delicate-looking pattern the frost had made on the ice — reminded me of a star field seen in one of my other avocations — astronomy.
And finally, a shot I called “Icebergs,” shot while lying on the ground (too old for this) and shooting at a small opening in the ice, attempting to give the impression of size. Hope it worked.
I had a wonderful time sharing this brisk winter morning with Brent (and my lovely wife who accompanied us); hope that I’ve done these images justice. I’m looking forward to being part of The Roving Photographer and hope you like the results.
Staff Writer Paul Sevensky is a communications specialist and amateur photographer. When he isn’t shooting, he covers advertising and PR on his own blog, at www.paulsevensky.com. View all of Paul Sevensky’s posts on The Roving Photographer.
The top photo is screaming to be HDR’d. If you shot it in raw, create +2 and -2 stop duplicates and put it in your favorite HDR software.