Still no snow : )

Heavy frost and wetland, Munising, MI

This image was taken a week or so ago the morning after I had been up all night during the Leonid meteor shower. Lots of heavy frost, I even had it on my tripod! I came to realize I really don't have many frost photos-- for one - because by this time of year we usually have a good covering of snow on the ground!
This image is not possible with conventional single exposure photography due to the very large dynamic range in the picture, the camera can't balance out everything in one exposure from the sun to the bright horizon to the backlit shadows. In the past, I have pretty much dismissed HDR, but in this situation I gave it a go. Image was made stacking 6 images at different exposure times and tone mapping with HDR software. So many times, I see some really fake looking HDR. My goal here was to reproduce exactly what I saw that morning. The key in my mind to this process is not to overdo the highlights,(or shadows in the sky) which is so tempting when you see what is revealed in the highlights. This is in line with what I read from a BW photog that studied with Ansel when mentioning in the digital post process the overabundance of photographers sharpening everything to death- why?- because they can. So, verdict on HDR- What do you think?

not quite a "Van Gogh" LOL...

startrails,meteors,aurora,orange is light pollution!-from Munising,brighter stars on left half is Milky Way

This is me having fun with digital. It's an image stack of 30 or so 60 second images taken at very high ISO in attempt to capture meteors. Kind of a novelty thing, not very aesthetic IMHO! Gives me a headache after looking at it too long.... Anyway, this was taken at the height of the leonids a few nights ago, and I only managed to capture one very bright meteor in this whole process... well, at least I got one....Bonus was a very faint aurora at the bottom of the horizon, which was not visible to the naked eye. Over time, it left a funky reflection off Lake Superior. A big reason you don't see images like this frequently is #1. A lot of things can go wrong in the process #2. technology to capture the magnitude of this image is relatively new #3. The process to acquire this image is a little more than just point and shoot with extensive post processing. In attempting photography from this location, I had thought this would be a great spot for night sky photography, was disappointed to see how much light pollution turned up in a relatively dark location.

collaborative effort

In my husband's travels, he spotted this wonderful wetland when driving a couple weeks ago. He took some pics, handheld, and showed them to me. I went back to that area, THREE TIMES, to see what I could come up with using a tripod and different lighting conditions. On the best day of the three- with lighting/no wind, I forgot my cable release... OH WELL. One thing is for sure. Late autumn is beautiful with the golden tamaracks. wetland and third or fourth snow of the season!

tamaracks and turning blueberry bushes