Snowfall

With much deliberation I decided to get out and photograph downtown Omaha just after a snowfall. I just missed the heavy snow, but that's OK - it would have only made me wipe down my lens over and over again.

I was interested to see what I could do hand-holding the camera that late at night (around 11:00). It was bright downtown, the light bouncing between the snow and the sky - and the image stabilization helped me out too.

In this situation, though, there is a trade-off. I had to shoot at ISO1600 at some pretty extreme settings (always at maximum aperture and, at times, 1/5 of a second on the shutter), so the shots are all slightly grainy - some to the point where it's distracting.

It was fun, though. I just took the camera out and didn't really care about the specifics of how damaged the final print might be (after all, I did have my tripod with me - I just chose not to use it), and I just walked around the snowy landscape taking photos.

Drifting

It was so cold I could barely feel the shutter release button on my camera, I couldn't really focus because of all the snow dusting into my eyes, and I almost lost my hat. But it was fun, and it was worth it.

How did you...

People often ask me how I managed to create a certain photograph. "Did you use photoshop?" they ask, and when I tell them yes, they nod their head, a bit of the mystery of the photograph lost to them.

I don't think I'm going to really answer that anymore. What does it matter, anyway?

This photo, for instance - is beautiful. I love the colors, the composition, the depth-of-field. It's exactly how I pictured it when I triggered the shutter release- a photo that almost speaks of an imaginary place somewhere far away.

Little does anyone know it was taken on the side of a dirty, dusty road next to a busy highway - that the colors that morning really weren't spectacular - that the sun wasn't in the ideal position and the light was beginning to become very harsh. But I knew that, by using a large aperture, I'd shroud the tree in a blur - and add some mystery to the photo. I also knew that I could punch up the colors in photoshop later to make the final photograph more in line with what I had in mind when I first captured it.

Does it matter how I did it? Should it matter?

I hope not.