Winters Over

In this episode I start off by apologizing, a terrible habit really, but its been such a long time since I recorded an episode I felt you deserved an explanation. 

We'll also go over what I do and, more importantly, DON'T want to do in my podcasts, and I struggle to find a good composition in a post winter forest landscape.

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If you've heard the podcast you'll know that I am challenging myself in different, and difficult ways. todays challenge may not seem to difficult, but given the landscape, I think it would have been difficult to find photos even without the challenge.

I challenged myself to shoot only using my longest lens. an 70-300 f4-5.6 lens. not particularly challenging when you think about it, I can get lots of close up shots of small things, spot wildlife off in the distance, or use it to really compress the background on an otherwise boring shot. all things that would have been great if I'd seen an opportunity.

The first image, and possible the closest thing to a good image from this outing is a bit of bit of a stretch, I may have spent more time editing this into something I liked than I spent out that day. I was never able to get far enough back to really get the trees entire reflection, and the lack of light in the sky made the image overall very flat. It was only through the magic of editing that I was able to bring out the highlights in the needles of the subject tree. it IS exaugurated beyond its actual appearance, and if that bothers you I'm sorry, but it is pretty close to the image I imagined while taking, except for the composition which couldn't be captured without a wider lens.

70mm f/5.6 1/40sec ISO 100

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238mm f/5.6 1/100sec ISO800

I really failed to speak about the next photo I got in the podcast, I didn't think much of it at the time but I think its the type of photo I should have been focusing on given the challenge I assigned myself. 

The 3 green bunches of pine needles really jump out to me as I walked along the trail. there was actually several over groupings of them on this tree, and had I looked I may have found a more pleasing arrangement. though I'm not displeased with what I got. There wasn't much editing to this photo besides a little contrast and color adjustments.

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Now here's an image straight out of camera...er um... phone. I felt like I couldn't do enough to describe the unphotogenic nature of this place in its current state. I'm sure its lovely during other times of the year, but we were smack dab in between  all of them. not quite winter, not quite spring, we call it mud season. I think if I had been looking harder, or had better weather conditions I could have done more at this location. although it was bleak this time. I'll be back to check it out when its more in bloom.

The final image I captured was a true experiment in my eyes. I can see the concept, I think it has potential to tell a story, unfortunately the foreground blends with the background, and they all kind of blend with the subject. I'd like to return to try this shot again when there are are leaves in on the trees and some sun in the sky.

81mm f/4 1/13sec ISO100 Focus Stacked

I spent HOURS trying to edit this into a usable image. I tried bright and saturated, dark and grey, I really wanted to make the subject jump out from the background. maybe I should have shot tighter to create a little more separation, but I'm not certain even that would have worked. in the end its pretty much in its natural state without much editing at all.

I think as far as the challenge goes I failed, I didn't know what to expect and I didn't think through what kind of shots I might be looking for for this challenge. I try not to pre-anticipate my photos. doing that can cause you to miss other photos cause you're only looking for one type of photo, or it can be a let down if you never find that type of photo you were looking for, on the other hand, I probably missed some photos cause I didn't really think about how best to use a long lens in the woods. its another lesson learned and, I think that's the point of challenging yourself. 

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Music for todays episode was provided by artists at uppbeat.io and pixabay.com

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

All good folk - Fly

License code: HPJV90F8GOLL8EC7

Music by MichaelKobrin from Pixabay