Tag: canoe

Winter’s Arrival

We ponder a photograph of a canoe amidst a serene landscape, and appreciate its stillness.

The Winter Solstice has come and past, and slowly our days are beginning to lengthen once again. Now is the time when Winter will really start announcing itself in New England.

As I write this post, there is a gentle snow falling in our yard, which will make those who are wishing for a white Christmas happy, so they can sing that song without a sense of longing for what could have been. This also is the time to start pulling together some of my wintry images…

A Canoe in the Assabet

This shot goes back 15 years, when my daily commute would take me past this locale quite frequently (I like to vary my route into work, when possible). This particular location also has a really nice aqueduct, which I will highlight another time.

I really like the stillness of the landscape when it’s snowing, as sound doesn’t carry quite as far, thus giving a sense of being by oneself in the moment. The blue of the canoe and the more muted tones of its surroundings made this stand out a bit. I’ve done other treatments of this image that highlight the blue a bit more, but I have to admit that I’m partial to keeping the entire image a bit more subdued.

A Touch of Blue

A simple touch…

There are many paths to a photo, some of which may rankle the ‘purist’ photographer in us. Early on, I was very much a purist in that I wanted to minimize the amount of post-processing. However, with the arrival of HDR processing, I expanded my range of experimentation and found it interesting to see how I could express more of a vision in my photography, rather than a representation of what I saw through the lens.

HDR can be very tricky and create some very cool results. Sometimes, I like to take a simpler approach…

Blue Canoe in the Assabet

This was a rather dreary day with sleet coming down lightly; the pale blue of the canoe stood out in the otherwise muted landscape.

The colors in the photo were already fairly muted, but not enough to get the mood that I wanted to communicate in this image. A simple desaturation of the image and some additional saturation of the blue color of the canoe created the sense of dying color in a winter landscape that I wanted to achieve.

What types of processing do you like to do in your images?