The “selective light” image of trees couple of weeks ago was well received here on the blog, so I looked through the Lightroom Library again for another candidate. And I found one. This picture was actually taken in high contrast light, so not much work besides turning into black and white was needed. Similar technique, but completely different feeling to the image.

I should title my iPhone photos posts something like “Quick snap” or similar. They are so fun to take and so easy to process before putting on blog. This one was taken on the same walk as last week bluebells. Just strolling around town on a sunny spring day with ice cream in mind.

When was the last time I shared a photo taken spontaneously with my iPhone? Must have been a while. I was just checking if there is something interesting hiding in Camera Roll, and indeed there was this image. I took it on a walk to creamery last week. With all free time I have now, I am discovering that you can actually ride a bike or walk around our middle-of-nowhere Iowa town, so I can observe the season’s changes. And my iPhone is always with me, to document all the buds, spring flowers and emerging green leaves.

We went to a park on weekend, wanting to get some physical activity and geocaching. The camera went with us only because, well, I try to take it with us whenever it is not too much of a hassle. If it is, the iPhone goes. This time qualified for a bigger one. I was walking around and shooting without a plan in mind, when I remembered about this weeks Digital Photography School Assignment: High Contrast Black and White. The dandelions were everywhere and it my first thought to photograph them. After considering for w a while, I decided it may not work too well. I figured green and yellow are too close colors. I was worried that even using Greyscale mix (or Channel Mixer in Photoshop) I will not be able to separate them. I was wrong. I didn’t even need a color picker. I was able to accent the difference in those colors just by moving green slider to the left, and yellow to the right. It turned out quite interesting.

It seems to me that HDR was invented with indoor shoots in mind. Nowhere else it can improve photographs in two ways, not just one. It not only gives incredible detail in the interior, main part of the shoot, but also lets you pick out of the windows what is outside . In the image below, you can see through the glass door the deck, covered with blue tent and some sitting spots. At the same time, you can study all the objects on the fireplace. Nice.

Today’s’ image is inspired by a beautiful portfolio by Paul Hart called “Truncated”. I saw it in the issue 85 of LensWork. Unfortunately, his web page is very restrained, one can say, so I don’t see a place you can really go and see his incredible images. Other than getting a magazine with his portfolio or his book.
What draw me to those images was the overall darkness of black and white pictures with the light spot in one place, defining the main subject of the photo. This one tree trunk exceptionally lit is making me come back to this portfolio over and over again. And the fact, that he is photographing over and over again the same place, close to home, nothing unusual about it, and still is coming home with exceptional images.
The subject is so mundane, that I was able to go through my Lightroom catalog and find a lot of images featuring trees, forest and such. I picked this one, I am not really sure if the color version of it was not already on the blog, about two years ago . I turned it black and white, and by vignetting and burning was able to put focus on this one trunk up front.

The spring officially started already the previous week, and on weekend, we went to look for it. But this is Iowa. Prairie. Or forests with lakes. I have no idea, where to look for flowers even. And so far, only the backyard lawns started to get green. All the wild grass is still grayish brownish. The only spring colors we found were… the moss.

The last winter images, hopefully. The snow is gone, but we still have the bird feeder out and full. We bought this winter different type of seeds than usual, and it brought different, more sophisticated bird species to it, but they also were less hungry or there was less of them. We put it out, needed to refill it two months later, and more then half of it is still there. For taking.

Last weekend, first day of spring, we went hiking on our neighborhood lake, looking for colors. We were rather optimistic, the snow just melted few days ago, and a bit came the same weekend as well. All I could get in brown-grey environment were the old, orange leaves, remains of last fall.

Ice fishing is not as popular in Iowa as it is in Minnesota. But there are some fans, and several weekends ago when we were hiking around Coralville Lake and Lake Macbride, we saw some of the tents. When we were coming back towards the end of the day, the fisherman were preparing to leave their positions as well. I found the spot and was waiting for those to to position themselves against the sunset sun for this image.