frost Archives

The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge gave us the prompt: Half-Light. The intent is to share a photo that is inspired by a poem, verse, song lyric or story…

20140627-SW-2014-06-27 07.42.22-1 — *The Road Not Taken*

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost (1916)

In response to Weekly Photo Challenge – Half-Light

Winter-Revisited-IMG_3368 — *Winter Revisited*

A Cold Shot

As we’re wrapping up the week, I figured it might be a good opportunity to look back a couple of years, when I took this photograph. Although I didn’t give it a title right away, I have come to call this image ‘Winter Revisited’; this sprang forth more from going back to this image again and again than anything in the subject matter, other than the obvious.

This shot was taken on February 7, 2014, at Rocky Pond in Boylston, Massachusetts; this is along one of the variants of my commute. I had pulled over, because I wanted to see what could be done with the sun’s warm glare off the ice, juxtaposed against the blue of the morning sky. Nothing really satisfied my desire to create something worthwhile, so I walked a bit along the edge of the pond.

That is when I noticed the frost still on this small brush and how the frost had grown into fractal patterns along the branches and twigs. Looking through the frosty brush toward the sun, the overhanging tree provided a nice bit of framing to the photo. All in all, I felt, and still feel, pretty good about the end result.

Random Notes

You’ll notice that a good percentage of my photography doesn’t adhere to the standard edict of keeping the sun in your back to properly light your subject. There are plenty of times when that is a good idea, but I find that allowing light to come from some more unconventional angles can provide dramatic images. Of course, for portrait photography it is not at all unusual to put the sun behind your subjects and use flash to light them; that provides for pleasing edge lighting (aka hair lighting) and full control of the light you put on their faces.

Using the sun to a similar effect in landscape images provides rather nice results, such as in this image, where the hoar frost gets to stand out rather than disappear.

This photo was taken with an iPhone 5S. With a minor bit of Photoshop work, I was able to enlarge the image for a large print with rather dramatic results. Thus far, I have printed it on 2’x2′ acrylic, which lifts the glow from the sun’s glare off the ice even more.

Hopefully you enjoyed this image, and, thank you for reading my ramblings!