After what felt like the wettest, most miserable autumn in history, my corner of Scotland finally moved into winter over last weekend. As result we got frost, lots and lots of frost. We got frost on frost, which makes for photographic gold, especially after weeks of rain.
So off I went for a jaunt around the river. The key thing to remember when taking pictures of frost is white balance, white is actually a really complicated colour photographically, depending on the ambient light in your composition, your camera can struggle to get ‘real’ white. This is where white balance comes in. I have a lovely feature on my trusty E-510 that enables me to balance my whites by taking a shot of something I know is white, like a piece of white paper. So you take a snap of the paper whilst in the field and that automatically calibrates white based on the paper. This is fine, provided the light doesn’t change, in which case things can get a little weird and you need to re-calibrate.
Anyway, with white paper in hand, I managed to get some winter-themed shots. When everything is covered in frost, I find it gets both easier and harder to take a good photo. The tree in todays picture was one of my better attempts, the challenge (once again) is composition, whilst this shot shows the tree in all it’s chilly glory, you don’t really get an idea of just how thick the frost was. But I like it, you can see the whole bunch on my Picasa photo stream and the best of them on my flickr stream.
In other news, I’ve been approached to contribute some photo’s to a local website and I really like feel like I’m slowly starting to raise my photographic profile within the local community. Which is nice.
Finally, much kudos to JT and his brilliant “Simply Superb Swans” website. He’s just posted some great photo’s of ‘a year in the life’ of the River Nairn and it’s inhabitants. I love the documentary style of the pictures, interspersed with some really creative photos. Well worth a look…
Unsure if I’ll get another chance to blog before Christmas, so have a good one and barring further crises, I’ll be back on the blog in the New Year :)
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