It's winter, for sure!

Today's blog is just about some creative pictures. No words of wisdom to bore you with! I hadn't picked up my camera since October...

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Golden Hour. I went for a walk around sunset on New Year's Day and took this HDR of a neighbour's bunkie into the setting sun. I did a fair bit of post-processing, including Topaz Simplify and a couple of passes through Topaz Impression to make it look like what I saw in my mind.

Snowflake Magic. Playing around with Topaz Star Effects.  This doesn't compare with some of the shots I've seen but I kind of like the effect. I was being lazy, shooting handheld with the 105 macro, no extension tubes but I put on the ringlight. Most of the snowflakes were unstructured little blobs but there were a few crystals. 1/100 @ f/11, ISO 6400.

Black Capped Chickadee in the snow. There are so many of them hanging around my feeders but they're so cute I couldn't resist. I used Topaz Clarity and deNoise and I'm quite pleased with how sharp this came out. I shot it with the Tamron 150-600mm at 600mm, 1/250 @ f/8, ISO 1800. Usually I can't do well under 1/1000 second so I surprised myself today. 

"And so it begins". Large amounts of snow do NOT make for good hard water. So whoever wanted to get the jump on the ice fishing season
took his life into his hands going out there. Not a great or safe idea. 

The Rock Cut at Miner's Bay in a snow squall 

"Winter in the Highlands". This house was right where I was standing just past the Rock Cut.  

On the way to the dentist on Friday (don't ask...) I left early to seek out Snowy Owls. ALL of the snowy owls I saw that day are in this picture.
Oh, you can't see them either? 

Again, lots of invisible Snowy Owls. But I was taken by these greenhouses and thought I'd turn them into a drawing of sorts. 

This started life as a frozen soap bubble. But with the help of Photoshop and some Topaz plugins, it became "Bubble World"!  

Here's another one.  A little different treatment.

Here's the Straight-out-of-Camera picture for the second image. If you want to try this at home, wait for it to get cold (these were shot around -10°C, or about +15°F) and get or mix up some bubble liquid. I tried about 1/3 dish detergent and 2/3 water and then changed to liquid hand soap. I think to get the internal crystals, you need to add some sort of sugar syrup: I used maple syrup, all I had on hand. Then with your camera ready, blow some bubbles. Most of them won't last long enough, so keep trying! I used a 105mm macro lens shooting at arm's length handheld, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 6400. 

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