Flurries

I could not believe the weather forecast for early Wednesday morning -- "wintry mix."  Then it was changed to snow flurries with no accumulation.  My expectation was a few flakes and nothing more.  As I drove my daughter to her class at about 8:30 we saw a few very tiny flakes.  One my way home I stopped off at Target -- when I came out of the store it was pouring big, fat snowflakes.  

As I drove home from my errands I kept hoping I would have time to get home to my camera before the heavy snow subsided.  Driving by the local wetland/bird sanctuary I thought -- I will come back here to take some shots.  You can see from the above photo I did make it home to pick up my camera and return to the lake.  At first I thought it would be a dud -- there was nothing sticking -- the temperatures were too high for the snow to even stick around on the trails.  But then, as I looked across the vista I could see the idea of a god shot -- and it would be black and white. 

The original photo was taken in color -- as I always do.  The conversion to black and white was done with Silver Efex software.  I dodged and burned a few areas to highlight the snow flakes.  For me it works.  I like the abstractness - the varying points of snowflake boken that stand out more against the darker areas of the landscape.  Contrasting with this is the sharp areas around the waterline and sticks in the water.  The reflection of the sky on the water is a plus.  The sky itself was not a plus; light gray and nothing going on with it.

On the way home from the lake -- at a stop sign I looked to my left and noticed the field of broomsedge.  The color of the weed is very striking.  So why is this a black and white?  Well, the sky again was pretty bad.  My best bet for this was black and white and allow the bare tree to become a silhouette.  Then contrast the grass above with the mud bank that is so raw.  For me the black and white works well with this.  I still may do some work on the color version of this photo.  The color of the mud played well with the color of the weed.

While I was out I managed to take a pretty good shot that I used for my 365 project photo for yesterday.  To see it and keep up with the photos from each day click the link to my other blog.

Also you will notice that a link to Lensbaby has been added to both blogs.  I get a lot of emails about my Lensbaby photos -- if you are interested in the lens -- click the photo ad and it will take you to the Lensbaby website.