A winter walk by the water, with a pocket camera

Winter weather is still eluding us in North Carolina. I was out around Carolina Beach Tuesday afternoon, with temps around 70ºF (21ºC for the rest of the world). It gradually cooled a little, and the breeze made a windbreaker a reasonable proposition, but still...winter...well, no cause to complain: it was a beautiful day to be outside. Off I went, carrying a Canon G10, a four year old pocketable digital camera.

The ocean and sky were not strikingly unusual when I arrived, but attractive nonetheless. The colors were not as saturated as presented in this image, but then, this is my reality, I'll see it as I want to!

I had performed an Education Concert earlier in the day, so this was the second time that I had a large audience:

I cut back and forth between the town streets and the weed-covered dunes along the beach.

Jealously guarded parking areas, left vacant in the off season:

This little lake attracted a few varieties of birds. I would rather have photographed them with a DSLR and a long telephoto lens, but some things were possible with my little Canon G10.

I'm disappointed when I see trash abandoned in inappropriate places, but I admit to a certain fascination with photographing it in some circumstances. The ibises didn't seem to mind (though that doesn't mean no harm was done).

Someone left quite a footprint in the mud!

Ah, tranquility!

To "frame" the series of photos above, here are some pre-sunrise shots from the next morning:

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Foggy morning

An unusual heat wave in the middle of winter caused Raleigh to be socked in with fairly heavy fog Friday night. This morning (Saturday), though the fog wasn't extremely dense, it persisted through several hours of daylight. I headed for a favorite "urban-rural" area to see what I could see.

Moderate fog can be deceptive. Things nearby look quite clear. It's not at all like the "pea soup" experience of almost losing your hand held in front of your face. Still, the distant parts of a landscape can completely disappear, and most interestingly for images in a two dimensional medium like photography, there is a kind of gradient of clarity. Objects become gradually more diffuse, less detailed, and less colorful when they are further away. It's the same as the basic principle of aerial perspective, only turbocharged by the fog. I wanted to see if I could use these conditions to add a little something to my photos.

The first image is an establishing shot, to give you an idea of the area where I began shooting. This is a stitched panorama of ten overlapping shots. The sky was completely uniform and uninteresting, so I filled it (by my choice of where I stood) with tree branches.

Like a cloudy day, only maybe even more so, a foggy day reflects light in all directions. Some light entered the usually impenetrable shade of the enclosed patio on the end of the old house.

The white fence and distant trees show the signs of aerial perspective.

It was easy for the camera to see into the shade, thanks to the fill light from the fog.

Joggers and walkers appeared out of the fog and disappeared into it.

The birds are fairly clear, while the fencing behind them is half obscured. I think the grass adds a three dimensional effect to the picture simply because it is so much more distinct and saturated with color in the foreground than in the background.

This detail shot doesn't have any obvious characteristics of fog, but the soft, even light did bring out the color contrasts of the awning and the emergency fire gear.

I moved on to the Raleigh Greenway, where this bridge and the trees were complemented by the perspective enhancements of the mist.

A treehouse in the woods! What a fun place for a young person to hide out on a day like this!

As I headed back, others were heading out for some exercise. Here we have six legs jogging into the mysterious distance.

(Lenses used: Canon 16-35/2.8, 24-105/4, 70-200/2.8 - a flexible trio of overlapping zooms, two of them with image stabilization. Among other things, this enabled the slow shutter speed of the last shot, allowing enough motion blur to lend some dynamism to the dog and man.)

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Cat hiding in the bush - an exercise for shooting in low light

A neighborhood cat decided to hunt in our yard. It hid under a dense bush, in such dark that I could barely see it, as I lay down resting on my elbows. The camera, however, was able to focus on kitty's eyes, and thanks to very high ISO capabilities, it pulled out these jungle-like pictures. Watch out birds! Watch out squirrels!

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Downtown Raleigh from 25 meters

I've been hoping to get my 2013 photo projects going with some wintery atmosphere. To this point, the NC Piedmont has had slightly warm to close to average seasonal temperatures, which means any precipitation has been rain. It's hard not to "expect" a snow covered landscape (or cityscape) when thinking about winter, but there are also characteristics of the daylight that go with the season.

Yesterday, late afternoon, I drove to downtown Raleigh with the aim of making some images of the performing arts center in "golden hour" light. I found myself on a roof at an eye level of maybe 80 feet above the surrounding streets. I did this as an establishing shot, to kind of get my bearings. The light never developed as I'd anticipated, or at least not from this vantage, so I ended up looking at other things.

I realized I had found a good lookout post (atop a parking deck). While waiting for the clouds to develop and daylight to drop to levels similar to the city's artificial lights, I explored the abstract shapes around me. There is almost always some gritty texture to be found in concrete structures.

A narrow angle of view (telephoto lens) renders a kind of compression of distance (we don't have many cues for depth perception), making two dimensional shapes out of three dimensional objects.

A look over the edge of the roof gave a good view of the long approach from the south (McDowell Street).

I managed to time the shutter release well enough to catch this pulsing warning beacon atop a radio tower.

The stair well/elevator housing is an odd looking structure when isolated against the sky.

I heard some thumping, and looked down in time to see a man looking up at the basketball he'd thrown after dribbling.

I've long wanted to find a viewpoint to photograph this plant, and stumbled on it from my garage roof hideaway.

I try not to overdo fisheye shots, but once in a while the extremely wide view is useful. In this case, I think the curved lines worked okay for the shapes of the roof and sky, and the leading lines of the wall and curb.

Another view over the edge.

 We're accustomed to seeing these buildings from street level. I tried composing things with just the roof of the convention center as a base for the upper portion of the BB&T tower.

This shot gives an idea of my lonely surroundings as I worked (this is looking ESE, away from the sunset).

At this point, I had some vantage points and directions scoped out, so I watched the development of the sky, and tried to catch it in as many interesting ways as I could in a short time.

I turned away again to catch this.

Then back for the final trails of light.

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