Monday, December 08, 2008

Snow fall

I credit Roger with this find during our wintery woodsy photowalk a couple of weeks back. While I was still working on photographing an abandoned car, he spotted a snowflake which had entangled itself in the remains of a spider web in the crook of a tree.

I showed him my patented "focus on your finger with your point and shoot camera in super macro mode, then move toward the subject until it's sharp in the viewfinder" trick. It works when the camera has trouble making up its mind what to focus on when shooting up close. It's especially effective when shooting bugs and spiders. Of course, while demonstrating the technique, I got too close with the camera and snapped one of the invisible guy lines, causing the snowflake to flap in the breeze, making closeup shots even harder.

About a dozen attempts on my part resulted in one shot in pretty sharp focus. I added some motion blur to give the impression that the flake was photographed as it fell.

The weather report says we're due a visit by a couple billion of this guy's buddies in the next couple of days. Snow shovel is at the ready. Cupboard is stocked with coffee. Bring 'em on.

Click on this post's headline for image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

2 comments:

HeyJules said...

Very cool photo (and I guess I mean that in both senses of the word!)

Anonymous said...

I really like this photo. That had to be really neat to find the one flake in the web. You'd be hard pressed to find a lone flake anywhere around here now! Next time I'm out taking pics of tiny objects, I'll have to give your patented point-and-shoot trick a shot!
- Carla