Saturday, March 24, 2012

Going around the botanic garden after a snowfall


February 23 was a snowstorm here in Illinois. It started at night and continued on until early morning of the 24th. Of course the roads were nasty but the road travel wasn't very bad at all. It was almost March which means that spring is just around the corner. This will be one of the last...if not the last major snowfall this season, which means the last few days when snow is on the ground...which means I had to go out there and shoot!


The rocks looks awesome with snow in them.


I bet this bridge has been photographed a million times. I still love photographing it a couple of times a year.

Luckily we were able to visit our favorite botanic garden the next Sunday. Snow was still on the ground and the weather was great! It was around 45 degress, a bit cold but not freezing. So armed with our coats and cameras, we went out and shot!

I decided to bring a wide angle lens with me, my trusty 17-40mm f4 lens. It was bright, but the sun wasn't intense. I set my camera for aperture priority, at ISO 100. No worries about the lighting, as the lighting was perfect! We walked around most of the gardens, especially where there was snow...that was the thing that we came in here for anyway.


Taken in the Japanese garden. I love the trees on the side of the frame.


The water is a bit frozen, but it was starting to melt.

When photographing snow, I usually set my exposure compensation to around +1. This will prevent your camera from underexposing because there's white snow in majority of the shots, that it makes your camera think that it needs to lower the exposure. I shoot in raw and if theres are a bit of overblown highlights I can fix that in lightroom using the recovery feature, although I don't overdo this. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your shots don't lose valuable information from overexposing by metering your shots properly, while you shoot it and prevent fixing the shots afterwards in post processing.


The sun was getting a bit harsh. Time for breakfast!


This looked awesome in summer...with water in it.

Hopefully I can do winter shots again on the weekend although I doubt it. I was just so glad that I had the chance to photograph the seasons last major snowfall!

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