First Snowfall
Update: After reviewing the published project, I realized I wasn't happy with the processing of several images. Sometimes it was color balance, other times the images just felt - well - dull. Granted, it was an overcast day, but things seemed more dreary than they really were. So I took time today and made adjustments to many of the images.
This past weekend, Toronto received its first snowfall of the season.
The view from the deck on Sunday morning.
Despite the heavy cloud cover, I decided it was still worth going to capture it at one of my favorite city locations, the Rouge National Urban Park.
The recent cold temperatures were helping to ice up the marsh at the Rouge Park. But it wasn’t quite cold enough to overcome what little warmth was left in the water. What I thought at first was a reflection of a branch in the water, turned out to be cracks in the skim of ice. The ice-blurred oak leaves added warmth, texture and balance to the scene.
Amazing how changing your focal length affects the composition! On the left, captured at 15mm on my 12-50mm zoom and on the right, captured at 100mm on my 100-400mm lens. My position changed, but not the subject distance. While not particularly obvious in this project, the left image was also captured in hi-res mode on my Olympus EM5 Mark III, which produces a raw, 66MB file rather than the standard ~20MB file.
The low contrast lighting made capturing a wide range of tones possible and perfect for black and white photography
I caught site of this male Bufflehead duck while at the marsh. He was quite entertaining and quite challenging to capture as he dove under the water frequently. I'm so glad I brought my 100-400mm lens with me!
My final image was somewhat of a happy accident. Originally, I was focussing on a flock of seagulls sitting on the thin ice, but I shifted my position slightly and my lens refocused on the bulrushes in the foreground. It's actually a much more interesting image! The extremely shallow depth of field brought out several falling snowflakes against a heavily blurred background. I enhanced the blue tones to make this image feel colder and more winter-like.
