Dead Stuff can be Beautiful

We’re definitely into winter here in the Pacific Northwest.  Over the past week we’ve set some records for low temperatures.  In Olympia, where I’m located, we have had 6 and 7 degree mornings several times this week.  But although it’s cold, there’s been no moisture; which thankfully means no shoveling of snow!  The skies have been a beautiful blue, yet it’s hard to make myself get outside in these temperature to take photographs.  But today I saw the weather forecast was calling for a change; with warmer temps and rain due back by the weekend, so I decided I better take advantage of one of the last days of full sunshine for awhile.

Yesterday I froze while taking a few photos down at Capitol Lake.  Today I learned some tips on staying while photographing.  I put on my silk long underwear under my regular clothes.  I layered jeans over the bottoms, and on top I added a thin sweater top, along with a down vest, a muffler, and a lined fleece jacket over that.  I used ear muffs and a musher style hat for my head and I put some foot warmers in my shoes and hand warmers in my pockets.  I also wore a very thin pair of gloves that allowed me to work the controls on the camera without having to take them off.  Keeping the hand warmers in my pockets gave me a chance to warm up my fingers between shots.  They worked great and I’ll certainly be buying more soon.

The McLean Nature Trail is just a couple miles from home.  I go there a lot in the spring and fall for photo shoots, but I’ve been thinking that at this time of year I’m really going to have to look extra hard to find beauty in the woods.  I decided to challenge myself to go out and not only find it, but to use just one lens to capture it.  I choose my Tamron 90mm Macro.  Next time I think I’ll take the 18-200mm to give myself more flexibility, but today was a good day to get some practice with the macro and to see just what it could do.  I love taking macro shots, but I’m usually shooting flowers and insects.  There were none of those today at McLean, but the frigid temperatures of the past week left some very interesting ice and frost patterns.  One particular frost picture came out very blue and I adjusted it a little to give it a purple cast.  It’s not vert natural looking, but it’s still one of my favorites because of the interesting frost crystals!  As you look through the gallery, I hope you’ll find the beauty in the winter woods that I’ve tried to capture.

[svgallery name="mclean"]