Winter weather reduces the amount of daylight hours for outdoor photography, but it’s often worth wrapping up well and going out into the freezing cold to try and capture some of the magical transformations that occur on the rare occasions that it snows. I was drawn out of the front door by the recent proper snowfall for ages, and spent a couple of hours with the camera and the challenge of hoping to capture some of that atmosphere…
Snowy scenes usually trick the exposure meters in cameras, which expect an ‘average’ amount of light, so they usually need some positive exposure to compensate. However, if overexposed, any detail in the snow is lost, so it really helps to shoot in RAW file format to preserve all the details, which can be recovered when processed on a computer.
This was taken out of my window, in an attempt to capture the beauty of the trees when covered in snow. It is a manual composite of four RAW exposures from -1.5ev to +1.5ev in order to compensate for the huge difference in light levels from the top of the image to the bottom without blowing out the details of the snow at the top or losing details in the shadows in the lower part.
Once actually out of the front door, I noticed the way the windows of Pitman House and the branches of the big plane tree were diagonally opposite, and I liked the symbolism of man-made structure vs nature, but both providing shelter from the cold, with the matching warmer colours of the leaves and the bricks.
Taken from the top balcony of Heston House, this shows how prominent the murel by Artmongers, painted on the back of Addey and Stanhope School, is for local residents, especially in Heald Street and Florence Terrace. The murel project, which involved the students at the school, was controversial, but went ahead despite several residents objecting. However, its colours makes a great contrast to the almost monochrome snowy surroundings.
When I came across these snow-blobs on the wall of the top balcony of Heston House, they really made me smile, but trying to include them in an interesting way in an image proved to be a challenge, but I couldn’t help feel that they were looking across frozen Deptford in disdain at the contrast in living standards to those who frequent the Canary Wharf towers in the distance. The blue blob just left of centre is the above mural 🙂
Guess who’s been active in the garden!
Robin came to greet me as soon as I entered Heston Nature Garden, singing a beautiful welcome, hoping for some fresh mealworms, probably! Robin has been in this garden since 2017 at least, and is recognisable by the missing claw on the left foot.
Sammy the young dog fox is a cub from this year, who is wary, but knows me well, and has found a monkey nut that I put out for the squirrels. I’ve seen foxes cache individual peanuts in the past, so they must value their nutritional value as well as their taste.
Here’s Sammy again, by the bird table. Several local foxes pass through the garden regularly, but I avoid feeding them directly, because I don’t want them to get too familiar with humans, as they are wild animals and should be treated as such, as that is part of their beauty. However, they are intelligent and inquisitive social animals, so they have got to know me from feeding the birds and squirrels and cleaning out the water bowls nearly every day, and I have got to know some of them quite well, and occasionally even manage to get a chance to take a photo.
I had hoped to get a rare fox-in-the snow pic, but this is the nearest I got on this occasion. However, I like to get some wider angle ‘environment’ shots of foxes for a change, and liked the yellow/brown silver birch leaves in the foreground with surrounding ivy and dusting of snow in the background, as well as the customer waiting for the ‘Victuallers of Distinction’ to open for service!
This is just a few of the images taken that I liked the look of, I hope you enjoyed my mini-tour of the snowy outdoors, and would be interested in your feedback. If positive, It would encourage me to process some more of the images to add to this post…