The weather was bleak. The trees were still without leaves. Nothing looked pretty. Still, I needed to get out and get into the woods and practice with my camera, even if I couldn’t expect to capture anything worthwhile. I would usually just go to Green Lakes on such occasions, but it is so fucking crowded right now with way-too-many folks all trying to socially distance in the same park … so I drove to Stoney Pond.
I would walk less than a mile as I tinkered with meaningless compositions more than I exercised. That is okay, I think – it was what I felt compelled to do.
I walked along the south shore and took a simple image, nothing special or to be proud of. I considered an ICM image, but the light was too flat and the scene too monochromatic. I can imagine colored-ICM working with the same scene with a warm morning light and leaves on the trees, but it would need to be captured this fall as the sunrise and sunset are both tracking too far north to hit the trees during the summer months. Then again, with autumn colors, it might be okay without the ICM, but I think the saturation will be too top–heavy.
Next, I walked along the east shore of the pond and moved into small wooded area to the east of the pond where there is some flowing water. I tried to capture and image of a broken tree by stitching images together but realized when I returned home that either (1) I needed to use a tripod or (2) trying to stack in busy woods is too difficult for the software. Either way, it would have been easier to capture if I just had an ultra-wide. Hmmmm….
In the same area I saw some neat things: First, I noticed how the new flowering plants that were growing on the ground were piercing through the fallen leaves from last year and they looked pretty cool.
Then, I noticed this one Trillium plant that had an appealing symmetry.
And finally, before heading for the trails, there was this one little instance of color poking through the leaves as well.
In the woods, I found an old tree with detail that interested me, another tree with a colorful red hue that contrasted with the desaturated forest floor, and a piece of wood precariously balancing on a branch.
Now … that piece of wood on the branch: how did it get there? The rest of the tree was directly beneath it, but it has been decaying for many years, so I am guessing that someone was walking by and placed it there, 8 feet up, after walking through some pricker-bushes to get there. And they must have been careful to position it in such a way that the moss would continue to grow. That is my theory and I am sticking to it.
I walked further along the trail – it was a mostly unremarkable path.
The image that I am most pleased with (which means I dislike it less than any other) was this last capture of a ground flower that I captured with my 14-150 on a tripod with the “pop-up” flash bounced toward the subject with a white card from camera right. I am most pleased, because it is not an image I would have captured a year ago. I pre-visualized this crop. I wanted to get the single flower with the 2 buds in frame. I knew to keep the flower and the bud on the left in the same focal plane. I purposefully chose the most shallow depth of field that I could to reduce the distraction from the mess on the floor of the woods. I chose to use a flash on a nature-subject. It isn’t something I’d write home about, but it was an image that showed some growth, so I like that about it.
