We were driving back from visiting with family yesterday evening, and I had my camera out in my hands. I got this idea of the long shutter speed image when we were passing those ubiquitous tree alleys along the road. Yes, they are very dangerous, as they leave no space or shoulder on either side of the road. But they are beautiful nevertheless. It was fun trying different settings on the camera, and using the car’s high beam to light the trees in passing.

I went around my parents backyard one evening, looking for interesting photographs among most mundane objects, like wood stacks, branches, trees around the house. I was looking for patterns and shapes. This is the one of most regular patterns I found, with just a hint of irregularities in the tips of the wood.

I haven’t seen petrified forest before. Well, technically I have not seen it last time in Utah, either. Just this year, Southern Utah received well above average of snow, and I happened to be there middle March, a day or two after last snow storm. Escalante Petrified Forest State Park was basically closed, and all I could see was a representative display at the visitors parking. Not much, but gave me some ideas what petrified forest is about. And several nice photograhs, which I thought my need some Details Enhancement. And believe it or not, it was done without use of Photomatix. Just smart Lightroom Details Enhancer preset (sorry, I cannot find the source of the preset right now. If you are the creator, put the link in Comments, I will be happy to add it to the post).

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.

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.

I took this image a couple of weekends ago. We were walking along the lake not far from our home. We wanted to take some photographs of small waterfalls where the lake meets another reservoir, but it was frozen and not impressive at all. In the meantime, it was getting close to sunset, and I saw not only the amazing clouds on the sky, but also the sunset colors showing through the trees. I snapped several images, I loved what I saw, but it turned out to be a challenge to achieve the same effect on the photograph.

One thing I realized taking all those pictures with my iPhone for last several months is that it performs awfully in low light situations. I follow thebestcamera.com feed, and it doesn’t seem to be a deal breaker for all those pictures, but it bothers me nevertheless. Anyway, I decided to post something far less grainy this time, I took this picture one of freezing days this winter, freshly after snow fall. I have been trying to picture the newly arrived winter, an that detail shot did it for me.

Last week, just about time everybody and their mother was doing Christmas shopping, we got ice storm. I just love photographing trees covered with ice. I only took few snaps with iPhone, planning on going out next morning with “big brother” camera, but before I got up, the warmer front came and it all melted.

I took an urban photowalk, having time and not ideas what to do with myself in the City. It was an interesting experience, because I rather do not take pictures of urban areas, architecture and details. A lot of learning experience, also in post-processing (yes, this PhotowalkPro tutorial came in handy few times). But 4 hours of image taking resulted in small gallery, which you can see here.

This image was taken here.

A long, 4 day weekend is a lot of time to waste. We decided to spend some of it outdoors, geocaching in Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area, close to our home. It is already that time of the year, when it is cold, but not freezing, the difference between the actual temperature and wind chill is discouraging to go out, and the whole landscape is just… well, brownish. But this view was somehowe interesting, and it made for nice HDR. The only thing bothers me are the trees on the left, which I couldn’t decide if I prefer them left-most cut out or not. I decided to leave it as it is.