Nice weather this week, eh? Nice if you’re a skier, not so much if you’re pining for green grass and tulips. Sorry, you can totally blame me. I started BBQing last weekend, and I think the Universe wanted to remind me that it’s not quite spring yet.
The good news is, the weather has been giving me lots of time to practice photographing snow. If you can control the exposure on your camera, you’ll probably need to compensate for the bright whiteness of snow by overexposing your shots a little bit. Your camera tries to balance all the lights and darks in a shot to a nice middle grey tone, so it will darken a shot that is primarily bright white (like a snowy landscape) by underexposing, and brighten a dark scene to a muddy grey by overexposing. (And for some reason, my camera also underexposes wildly with the Lensbaby, so I had to torque the exposure slider on this one almost all the way to the right to get the exposure right on this one.)
I thought this snow-covered sign was pretty representative of the week!
And throughout the week, there was a lot of this going on.
It was my Mom’s birthday last weekend, and Lucas helped to decorate the envelope for one of her gifts. 🙂
I follow a handful of people on Flickr that take really amazing self-portraits. They’re beautiful, artistic, dramatic, insightful portraits and I admire them so much. I *hate* taking self-portraits. Much as I admire the selfies of others, I find my own foolish and indulgent and wonder why you would want to see me instead of any of the other minutiae I photograph every day. (You’d rather see pictures of a snowplow than me, right?) But they say you should challenge yourself in order to grow, so I’m trying to take more self-portraits. I’ll never be able to do an entire year of self-portraits, but here’s one. It’s an okay picture, but even posting it makes me squirm. I do like the caption I posted with it on Flickr, though: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~ C.S. Lewis
Na na na na na na na na – BAT CAT!
I love this picture of the landlocked lighthouse at the Museum of Science and Technology. I love how the colours pop and how the wispy bits of cirrus clouds balance the lighthouse in the composition. It was so bitterly cold as I was taking this that my eyes were watering and my iPhone was hurting my fingers. Brrr!
Growing boys earn growing freedoms. I said they could walk to school by themselves, but I did not say that I wouldn’t stalk them on the route to make sure they were well on their way after I dropped Lucas off at daycare.
I’m pretty sure they noticed me. 🙂
oh…i still owe you something on the self portrait thing, eh;)?
i missed this one on flickr as life rolls over me these days.
i learned from my self portraits, technically and more. i learned to be a kind photographer and learned how to be kind to me. imperfections are there baby, all the time…but sometimes it is nice to avoid them and other times it is just as important to celebrate them. and how better to do this than photograph that which is the most easily criticized – in my case, myself. and sometimes you just need someone to get the job done right – to express an emotion…to work through something tough…and selfies come in pretty handy as photo therapy. trust me. throw in a good song lyric? and you have had your own session right there.
selfies can be your friend:)