The Quiet Picture

After the snowfall finished and the temperatures crept up above freezing, I took out the skis and once again wondered if this would finally be the last skiing trip of the season (here in Los, anyway). The snowmobilers seem to be late starters so I had to work harder than I had anticipited and waded through the fresh wet snow, but then I got on the main trail and was able to enjoy easy skiing. Otherwise it was rather boring, the trees were dripping and the sky was grey.And so it figures that the snowfall just started again.

As much as I love winter, even I am starting to think that maybe it would nice with another season now. I’m itching to frame some colourful flowers for a change!

Snowing… a lot. The world is all white.

Snowing….Well it was, a little bit, despite the positive figures in the thermometer. I went for a walk and noticed that the snowmobile trails are still in good condition and figured that it would be worth trying to ski on the wet snow. Excellent move - the glide was as good as it’s ever been and the grip was better than ever! I’m definitely going to the mountains next weekend, all I need is one sunny day. Should be fab!

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I’m sorry if it seems like I’m always talking about the weather and skiing. I’m just keeping a record for myself, because the memory tends to be rather short when weather is concerned. So in the coming years, when it seems like the seasons are off whack, I can just check my blog to refresh my memory!

Snowing…

It was a sunny day but now it’s snowing again. Honestly, I’m not making this up!

Snowing…

Snowing…

Snowing…

Just couldn’t resist it. Thought I’d try skiing as long as the weather allows and today it’s snowing some more, zero temperature.When I bought my skis, I decided to go the easy way and get the type where you don’t need to apply ski wax. This is naturally a compromise and you lose a bit of glide, but I was quite alright with that because I certainly have no need for speed. The problem gets even worse when the snow is sticky, as the non-wax skis lose their glide just about completely then. I can now confirm that this is absolutely true. I had an impressive snow build-up under the skis so I had zero glide at times, and then suddenly, the snow would come off and the skis almost glided from under me. Conversely, just when I thought that I had some glide, the skis would get stuck again, halting my progress and almost sending me head first into the snow. Take all that and add 20 cm of soft snow, and I wouldn’t call it skiing anymore. I would have turned back had I not found the situation so funny… but then the joke wore off and I decided to get the rest of my workout shovelling snow from the driveway.

3 April and counting.

This time of the year, every skiing trip is potentially the last one of the season. I left right after breakfast while the world was still grey with frost after a cold night, had a quiet trip through the snowcovered forests and lake. But as for the skiing season, it is lightly snowing as I write this. Maybe I shouldn’t pack up the skis quite yet.

I had an opportunity to photograph dogs today. I have never been very good with moving subjects, which is why I normally shoot flowers and landscapes. They don’t run. But I won’t shy away from a chance to try my hand at animal photography so there I was, equipped with two 1 GB memory cards and the lovely 300mm f4L, ready for action.
There are several things that amaze me about this photo. First and foremost, that it worked out at all! Most of the pictures I took had either compositional or focus problems, or both. But somehow, heaven knows how, I managed to get everything right. The only manipulation is with the very top of the image, where I cloned off some OOF forest. I could also have cropped it off, or left it there - it didn’t disturb that much, but I just liked the idea of a homogenous grey BG to the beautiful sunlit dog. Another amazing thing is that this was the 3rd image I took in the whole photo session, must have been beginner’s luck then. But that also made the difference - the snow is unspoilt here. The more the dogs were playing, the more there were tracks in the snow and it naturally shows in the images.

This is a good example of my editing routine. When I start at the virtual light table, I first check out the sharpness of the image. Anything unsharp gets binned straight away, in this case it was about 75% of the 208 images I took. Then I check the exposure and bin the over or underexposed images, and having done that, concentrate on the composition. In this case, I also had an issue with the dog postures and what they were doing in the image, and many images with more butt than face were condemded to the trash can, along with everything with missing limbs (the tail seems to be a tough one to include in the frame). I also had some duplicates or almost similar images which I threw away. After a couple of hours at the light table, I had 9 keepers. 9 out of 208 - thank you digital! When I shoot landscapes, my keeper ratio is about 1:3 and with closeups, 1:5 or so. This depends a whole lot of on the circumstances (for example, the keeper ratio plummets when I take closeups under windy conditions) but one thing for sure is that it was a whole lot higher when I was shooting film. Just goes to show that the shooting habits differ depending on the media. With digital you can be wasteful so you don’t always think through how you shoot, instead you take a few alternative versions and keep the one you like best. But to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t even have attempted photographing the dogs if I still used film. Quantity doesn’t equal quality, but quantity can guarantee quality… Sometimes, photography becomes a numbers game!