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Friday, April 28, 2023

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.  

8 comments:

  1. Love the duck photo! I think your guy gave you some good advice - basically, be ready for anything. Sounds you're really enjoying this process!

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  2. You are definitely making progress. And, even thought I'm not a particularly good photographer, I'm enjoying your analyses. So please keep it up.

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  3. Great shots, Kate. There’s a word for that spring green glow you’re describing: frondescence. (A former colleague told me that.) I like the shots in silhouette. You can use fill flash too if you want to bring out the color in something. I’m enjoying your photography expeditions. You’re inspiring me to spend more time with my DSLR, but I’ll probably save that for when we’re traveling.

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  4. What a wonderful shot of the duck, Kate. Don't you just love it when you capture the unexpected? I have been enjoying your weekly photo posts. Today I walked outside and began taking photos of my flowers and I thought of you and the lovely flowers you showed earlier this week. Thank you for inspiring.

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  5. I think your new plan is yielding good fruit! My husband was a professional photographer and I watched him take thousands of pictures, even before digital cameras. It taught me a lot to simply silently watch him, but I don't make a practice of photographing much these days besides quilting, and I don't often use his Nikon digital anymore, either. Your photos, especially the one with the mushroom and the black and white with the sun, are quite good, so keep working at it.

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  6. I'm always happy to see some scenery of Oklahoma, even when it's cold and wet. I miss the stark beauty of winter in Oklahoma. How cool are those beautiful images with no photo editing. Of course the duck hiney is a keeper!

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  7. I love the duck! I can't figure out what your husband's subject is in the next post. It looks like a plastic honeycomb, or a drill bit holder, but I don't think it is too clean for either of those.

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  8. Beautiful shots!!
    the duck is just perfect!!! and right? you kinda chance it and hope your looking at just the right time!

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