Pondering the details

[esearing]

During covid and cold whether I tend to think about photography rather than practice it. this lets me mentally prepare for what I might encounter in the field. Please add to the list your observations/thought.

Sky color - Mainly applies to clear sky days but the south's blue sky is much lighter and hazier than the North or West skies. We have haze from pollution and the smoky mountains. City vs country sky color/haze.

Water exposure time - More textured white water less time 1/2 second, more white or if shot from distance with lots of other focal items 3+ seconds - Can I envision the smoothing of movement or polarized surface.

Slight Wind - movement in tops of trees can get blurry which can enhance or degrade an image

Color of foliage - Corran pointed out to me that Georgia has lots of yellow green foliage vs mostly green. Orange or blue filters and polarizers alter this vs Yellow filter not as well.

Vastness vs intimacy of subject - We all love the wide open spaces shots of the west's deserts and mountains but not all of us can venture there and are subject to more intimate scenes and compositional choices. So how do we explore those distances.

Emotion vs quality - Sometimes I feel more than is visually captured when photographing waterfalls. Water has an effect on me that I wish I could convey on film/print. I know it is related to being outdoors, the sounds, and difficulty of access that makes an area special. the casual viewer has no sense of the miles of gravel road driven plus 2-3 miles of hiking with 40 pounds of gear so I could perch in the middle of a cold stream to capture that foreground element and the falls.

The use of on Camera filters - still learning

Color vs B&W - I have dedicated myself to the use of B&W film for a few years now. It irks me when my wife takes an Iphone shot that is just plain better due to color and the phone software corrections it does for her.

Time of day/ Light - I tend to be an early morning shooter which leaves me with some challenges and opportunities when deep in the woods.

[Heroique]

Slight Wind - movement in tops of trees can get blurry which can enhance or degrade an image.

Nice tip, it’s easy to watch part of a tree grow still and think the whole tree is still. Fooled me several times.

BTW, listening to the breeze, often soughing through the foliage of the tree I’m composing, is a superb way of relaxing my stress caused by the breeze refusing to subside.