Photo Play #12: Oklahoma's Cold and Wet Spring

Taking photo walks several times a week does remind you of what the weather was like the month before.  Most of March was cold, wet and windy.  Not conditions I like to walk in and not always ideal conditions for photography.  But the purpose of my current lessons is to try to see things from a different perspective and take photos that you wouldn't have taken before.  I really tried to do that with these photos from the end of March. 

The photos below were all taken with a Canon 70D combined with a Tamron 18-400 mm lens.  The files have been reduced in size for posting, there has been no other photo editing on the images. 

My Guy will tell you that I'm really bad at deciding that something isn't photo worthy, then something happens and I don't have my camera ready. I'm trying to be more open to images just happening, so I've been taking more photos where I normally wouldn't.  I was photographing some ducks on the lake.  Good shots but nothing special, till this happened. 

Maybe not a pretty picture, but I thought it cute and funny. It made the review cut because it's a photo I absolutely would have missed in the past.

The sun screened by thin clouds makes for some really interesting photos. I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but the shapes backlit by the sun make for an interesting photo.  I took a lot of photos to get the settings just right so the sun's not completely blown out.  I could probably raise some detail in Photoshop, but I like the black and white image.  

It was a really windy day (typical of March in Oklahoma) so I was lucky to get this in focus shot of the Crab Apple tree buds. Normally I would brighten this a bit in Photoshop and make the pinks pop a bit more. I probably should have used a higher ISO to get better color right out of the camera. I like the details in the leaves and that spring green with the dark pink buds.  

A different path on a different day, but with similar conditions yielded this shot. One of my goals that day was to photograph the new growth that was showing up along the path. The new green of spring often has a glow about it, if you know what I mean.  I wanted to capture that glow in a photo. There was just a touch of sun coming through the clouds and I caught that on this branch. It's pretty close to what I was going for.   

This was my accidental subject during that walk.  There's a little mushroom in the upper left of this photo and that caught my eye as I was attempting to photograph all the new growth.  I liked the idea of monochromatic color scheme, but I also shot some with the new growth. I thought this composition worked best.  Not at all what my goal was for this practice session, but I'm beginning to appreciate the unexpected. 

 

By the end of my walk, it was raining lightly.  The path felt closed in and dark. This photo best captured my impressions at the point in the walk.  I headed back to the car not long after this shot was taken.  I was happy to get home to a hot cup of tea.  

Take homes from this set of images:

1.  It's hard to get good shots when it's windy.  The right shutter speed and ISO will get you in focus. It can take a bit of playing to get there, but definitely worth it as you go from nothing in focus to most of your shots being in focus.  

2.  Taking more "accidental" images and more photos that in the past I would have missed due to not being prepared.  Getting better at capturing the vision/feeling I have in a photo.  

3.  Most of my photos are in focus, but still need some work on depth of field and color saturation.