Getting a real winter hike this month is a challenge. The snow cover is only minimal... or so we thought. But the situation in the mountains is different. After a fresh 2+ inches over night, the northern part of the Long Trail proved to be an amazing choice for an outing. Here are a few impressions...
This amazing farm sits in the neighboring town of Fairfax. We have been driving by many times. I finally managed to head over there with a camera in the evening light. But it turned out that the best view is not really towards the west, but more to the south (and there were hardly any clouds in the sky last night). So I called the help of the new Photoshop 2021 "Sky Replacement" feature and achieved this look. I love the result, but am still on the fence what to do with it... On the one side, this is art and the artist (i.e. the photographer) should be free to do with the raw material as he/she pleases. But replacing a major component of the image still feels a bit like cheating to me.
What is your opinion?
I picked up the idea for these still life arrangements in a presentation recently and thought it would be a nice exercise to find some props in my stash and compose a few myself. The technical side is not too complicated (but I still have to improve on the lighting) aside from the fact that you have to shoot straight downward (tripods with the option of a vertical arm are very helpful).
Here are a few examples:
Our photogroup's challenge for this month was to find non-cliché Holiday motives. So I was hunting for scenes typical for the season, but that did not involve lots of lights, Christmas trees or wrapped gift boxes. I have added one angel, though. Then I added greeting texts to some of them and uploaded the results here. I am not sure if these are really non-cliché, but if you find them nice enough, feel free to download and use in your own holiday e-greetings. If you'd like higher resolution, just shoot me an email!
