Saturday, January 16, 2016

The Beauty Of Snowy Woodlands - Part 1

Our temperatures plummeted and snow fell, leaving a wondrous world of white and crystal. So I hopped in the car and took a drive along the gravel road beside my house to photograph some of the beauty. As I got beyond my own property, I passed this gate into a fallow field, unused for many years:

Beyond the field, it was mostly woodland:

Another old farm field lay behind this row of trees:

Winter hardwoods covered with snow can look like a black and white photo, but the birch and pine trees here added a bit of color:

More birch and pine. There was probably also some spruce and/or fir but to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention. I was just enjoying the beauty of the winter forest:

An old barbed wire fence ran along the side of the road in places:

Judging by the color of the bark, I believe these were Red Pines:

Blue tubing ran here and there through the forest here like a giant spider web. Come springtime, those tubes will be carrying maple sap to the collection points:

More pines, laced with a filigree of snow:

To my surprise, the bare hardwood branches held more snow than the conifers - or perhaps it just showed more plainly:

Red Pines and American Beech trees, all etched and laced with white:

The forest floor often looks inviting to me in the winter, probably because it is more plainly visible. I took more photos on that brief drive, and I'll post them in Part 2, tomorrow:

3 comments:

  1. All these pictures, but especially picture #1 for me, just gorgeous, Bill. Loved the ice encapsulated cedar from a previous post too. Thank you for sharing these lovely shots, and life with your dear fur family.

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    1. Thank you. I often admire your photos as well. I sure wish I could take good pictures like yours of my black cats.

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    2. Loved your red poll girls in winter post today.

      It IS hard to photograph black animals. There isn't a picture I take that doesn't go through the editing program on my computer called Windows Live Photo. The secret to finding some definition in all that black fur is to either shoot the animal in indirect daylight, even from a window, or else, reduce the shadows by running the Shadow scale to the right. Sometimes reducing the Contrast on its sliding scale helps too. Afterwards, I format each picture as a smaller jpeg (and put them into a new file where I can find them) from where I upload them onto my blog. Hope that helps.

      I love your animal family shots either way because they're so obviously well loved, and I'm beginning to get a feel for their personalities. Best wishes for managing through this winter Bill.

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