Playing with color

I was feeling antsy and decided to walk to the ridge before sunrise on Friday. I did notice that a very light Hoar Frost had settled on the trees along with a low lying fog.

Taken with my unmodified camera. ")

Some wind blew as I passed the neighbor's yard and frost dissipated everywhere.

I'm just not able to help myself. I took the Infrared camera along with me.

I can't stop being curious about how things would look in a different light. I keep thinking that if I keep at it, I may even get proficient at it in all situations.

Seriously, I do not know exactly why certain colors show up. Items that reflect a certain kind of light appear a certain way. I can't explain it very well without referring to a long drawn out article on what spectrum the human eyes see and what we can't see.

In the 720nm spectrum, green leaves become white and the sky becomes very orange.

This is shot in the 665nm spectrum. 

I used a method called channel swapping to achieve these colors below.

The reddish tint on the trees can be yellow, reddish, or desaturated to be white.

And in the other direction...I removed the color in the trees but kept the bluish sky.

Have you gotten tired of Infrared? Two more samples from late afternoon.

This is with the 550nm filter. I haven't gotten the hang of it quite yet and I find I don't like it very much. The photo that comes out of camera is absolutely ugly.

I've did the channel swapping and the it still was horrible. More than likely it is because there isn't any bright green leaves, pines, or water to really make this sort of workable. Ick.

Edited to black and white, I find it somewhat pleasing, especially the sky.

The old car in the run off ditch is rusty colored but I sort of like this after I balanced the snow to pure white.

I went to black and white with this also.

And I loved it. The details in the rust came out like magic in B&W.

So maybe this filter isn't so bad as it shows variations in tone nicely.

Last year I did have one great day with that filter at the KVR big pond.

The thing I like about IR is there are no rules of color. It is like giving a kid a box of crayons and telling them to go wild.

...

Stay tuned for Dragons.

And a Foggy walk in IRChrome.

Frosted

I'm just going to put these shots up from yesterday.

Mother Nature really outdid herself with the Hoar Frost....

Boy was it incredible!

And the fog looked like it would let up this afternoon, only to swoop in again this evening.

Hoar Frost. My favorite, but 3 days of it? Wow!

Snow day

I adore the morning after a snow when the temperatures are frigid and the snow crystals glisten.
Snow Diamonds.

I'll never get those words out of my head. Yes, I think Dad each time I see them. He'd once asked me to take photos of them for him.
He was going blind at the time from macular degeneration.

But I always seek Snow Diamonds...

I live for these mornings. When the atmosphere is heavy with moisture and there is no wind.
The Hoar frost arrives and turns the world into a delightful place of reflecting lights.

Things look so magical with frost on them!

The morning light was magical on the snow. Charlie and I took a quick morning walk and went to do the chores.

Rich was still complaining about his stomach hurting. I asked pointed questions to try and help him figure out what was bothering him. It ended up with him telling me in a fit of anger to 'shut up' and get out.
Of course I think part of the issue was his inability to articulate what the problem was as much as deciding that my questions were nagging.
I handed him a sheet of paper that has the VA's phone number to the nurse's line and after I took all of his vitals [normal], I let him be while I took Mr. Charlie for a hike.

That dog does love snow!

Late in the afternoon, I fired up the Dreaded Skid Steer and cleared the parking area on the north side of the house. It is just yard, but in the winter it is nice to have it plowed out so I can bring groceries into the kitchen instead of walking around the house.
It went okay as far as driving the Beast goes. I got brave and did a little more touching up but didn't go hog wild. I need many more hours with the Beast before I could ever get proficient at it.

We are supposed to get some more snow later this week and the wind chills are to drop into the way below zero range.
Perfect weather for snowshoeing in the valleys.

Little Tiny Stuff

Yesterday morning there was enough humidity to have a small hoar frost. I saw the sun glinting through the trees and realized that shiny silvery glow I saw was frost!
I think the mules were a bit surprised as to how fast I tossed out hay into their feeder and trotted up to the shed to stash my hay 'sled'.
I grabbed the little red camera and took off.

The burdock sported little frosty crystals.

See the little hooks? And the crystals?

Pretty cool right?

Barbed wire fence:

Multi flora rose thorn in the woods above the creek:

I guess I am always pleasantly surprised every time I take a little walk through the woods and down around the creek.

I sat on a rock and listened to the sounds. There was a mossy rock at my feet. See that arrow?

Now look at the crystal!

As a side note:

Just so you know, this isn't always an easy feature to use but it sure beats trying to set up a DSLR camera. It took me about 4 or 5 shots to get one that I wanted.
When in Microscopic mode the camera takes fairly small photos. Something like 5MB. I wanted a larger print of one of the crystals and finally did work out a way to make it clear AND large enough.

Had I just tried to make an 8 by 10 print it would have turned out noisy and spotty.
I found a work around to that and printed out a nice photo of a snowflake.

The RAW files are much larger but I think Microscopic Mode defaults to a jpeg file.

All right, geek stuff aside, I did find it just perfect for FB, blogs, and other places on the internet.

My favorite of the day was the one below.

This was the middle portion of a twig that was laying across a small rock.

Here is how the twig looked when I pulled back a bit:

I was pretty amazed at how this turned out as I used the 'In focus stack' feature and this was hand held.

Yep, that is a tiny twig with frost growing on it.

The Tiny World is delightful and I am having a great time finding little things on some of these short winter days.



If you suddenly and unexpectdly feel joy, don't hesitate.
Give in to it.
~Mary Oliver