Snowy walk
We got a dusting of snow in Rhode Island this weekend, so I figured I’d tromp around with my camera and snap some snowy pics. Yesterday after breakfast I strapped on my new camera and went for a long walk. Took 280 pictures, with the majority snapped in a small wooded area nearby. I was having a tough time finding shots. I took a lot but wasn’t feeling very good about them. The compositions lacked depth, the colors were boring, just generally tough. When I imported them into Lightroom later in the day, I was correct – most were garbage. But a few keepers made it through.
I had the most success with reflections in spots of the creek that haven’t frozen over yet. I like the mixture of textures between ice, suspended leaves, and glassy reflections showing both the surrounding trees and skies overhead.
For the return journey, I headed towards the water. It proved more interesting terrain and the water more intriguing than leafless trees. The fluffy clouds in a bright sky helped too.
As I was trodding down the road, a jogger stopped and asked, “Hey, did you see the osprey? That’d be a great shot!”. I thanked him for the tip and went back to find the bird. It was perched high up in the tree. I had stuffed a new-to-me 55-250mm zoom lens in my pocket before leaving the house which was perfect for reaching way up to the top of the tree. Never having used a big zoom, I was quite impressed with the level of detail captured from a distance. Back home, I reviewed the photos and asked Emily for help identifying the bird. Didn’t quite look like an osprey. Turns out it was a red-tailed hawk.
Oh, and I nearly forget that a few nights earlier I took a second swing at night-sky photography. The light pollution near Providence is challenging, but I captured a bunch of stars that were invisible to the naked eye. Hopefully later this month, or next, Emily and I can head down to South County where the skies are darker. She can help navigate the constellations and bring along her telescope for real-time viewing and I can try taking better shots.
I mentioned earlier in passing that I dumped all these shots into Lightroom. That was only after struggling with the shots in Apple Photos first. I really enjoy the simplicity of Photos, both in the editing features and transparent cloud sync. However, when I imported 280 RAW + JPEG images at once, the app started behaving poorly. After initial import, I switched all the paired photos to use RAW as Original so I could edit with more data. That caused all of the thumbnail images to turn black. When double-clicked, the full-size image would render correctly, but as soon as I returned to the library grid all new images were rendered as black squares. Hmph. Then, after a few edits, the app hung for a bit before quitting unexpectedly. I repeated the attempt a few more times before giving up and pulling all the files back out to edit in Lightroom.
I knew of Lightroom, of course, and had been recommended it by a few folks, but previously avoided learning another piece of software for my modest editing needs. However, a few YouTube videos later, I had enough information to get the job done. So, for now, I’m going to try: shooting only in RAW, edit in Lightroom, export JPEG, import JPEG into Photos. This will hopefully keep the editing quick, and still leverage the seamless cloud sync in Photos. I’m undecided about holding onto the RAW files after editing. None of my stuff feels so precious that I need to start managing giant file sets, but we’ll see how it goes.