Chilly

Once in a while I try to take a proper photograph. Usually fail. This winter’s big freeze should have been an open goal, a gift, but sadly things indoors took precedence. Actually, not sadly at all… playing with Holly, watching Marie grow into the role of New Mum again, and Devon grow into the role of Big Brother for the first time, made it a bit of a non-contest. Faced with the choice of freezing my lens off outside, or playing with the family in a warm house, I vote for the latter.

But once in a while out I went on a snowy day, normally with next to no time, and every now and then I managed to take a decent picture:

Nikon D3S, Nikon 70-300 mm VR lens at 185mm, 1/200 at f 22, ISO 1000, hand held no flash. One of those race-against-time situations, I zipped about after work one afternoon in early January 2010, trying to find something to inspire me. Late in the process I got lucky, with a stunning light show from the setting sun, reflecting off an ice-covered back road a few miles from our home in Lincolnshire. The colours are as shot, and apart from a tiny amount of sharpening this is more or less how it came out of the camera. I experimented with a whole host of settings, but liked this one the best – nice narrow aperture to keep it crisp front-to-back, and a medium zoom from the reliable 70-300mm VR lens to keep it in the sweet spot. With the D3S, pushing it to ISO 1000 to achieve a decent shutter speed wasn’t even something I thought about.

This was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon. I excused myself from work and started by surveying the scene from our back garden:

Nikon D3S, Nikon 14-24mm f 2.8 lens at 14mm, 1/80 at f 22, ISO 1000, hand held no flash. Please excuse the photographer’s footprints, which rather spoil the pristine nature of the view, but will you look at that day…

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