The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Snow at last...

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Finally snow has made it to this corner of SW Scotland and by late yesterday afternoon had begun to settle.

I felt it would be chancing it too much to wait and see if it would still be there by morning, so in the evening I went out with the camera and took Rogan along to carry my tripod (I'm chronically fatigued if you remember. Not that I'd play on that or anything...).

Because it was dark, I had to use long exposures to boost the amount of light coming into the camera. However, because of the street lights, everything was yellow.

Back home on the computer, I took a couple of the better ones and dropped them into black and white, then played around with the brightness and contrast (and curves and levels for anyone who uses photoshop).

I was really quite pleased with these two. You can click on them for larger versions:





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26 comments

Brave Astronaut said...

Giving Maggie a run for her money as another artist in the family? Very nice work.

Mary Witzl said...

Those are fantastic, Kim! And they have me feeling so nostalgic for Scotland.

debra said...

there's such a nice feeling to your photos, Kim---with or without photoshop.
Our snow is fast melting. Mud is taking it's place...

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures - the first one looks like a fab pen and ink drawing!

Charlie said...

Ditto what Brave said. I'm a fan of your photography (oops, secret's out!) and I'd love to see more photos of Scotland and where you live.

The second one is a dead ringer for serenity . . .

Kim Ayres said...

Brave Astronaut - completely different art. Although I do take most of the photos of Maggie's work

Mary - I don't suppose you're getting much snow where you are...

Debra - thank you for your warm words :)

Bryher Hill - welcome to my Ramblings and thank you for taking the time to visit and comment :)

Charlie - you should join Facebook where I have more of my photos posted. We can also play scrabble :)

Eryl Shields said...

Is it still snowy now? It is here. Yesterday I had just got a fire going in the garden to burn all the fallen twigs, branches and leaves when it started coming down fast and completely covered all the debris before I could sweep it into a pile. All I could do after that was toast some marshmallows before going back into the house.

Sayre said...

Gorgeous - I like them in black and white!

savannah said...

gorgeous work, sugar! when i enlarged them, they did indeed look like pen & ink drawings. great detail and feeling! xoxox

Apex Zombie said...

Nice photos. They have an almost antique feel to them with all that grain (which I assume is snow falling?). Very nice indeed :)

Kanani said...

Ah, I like these a lot.
Hey, it's gotten cold here too. We went from dry and running around in shorts to days of hard rain and now snow in the mountains and 46º!
Finally feels like winter.

sarah said...

well done. i hope you posted these on photo-corner?

Kim Ayres said...

Eryl - No snow since, although it's partially melted then refrozen making some of the pavement treacherous

Sayre - thank you :) It certainly beats the yellow of the street lights

Savannah - it's a nice effect. I've done similar things with photos of object in the fog before now, which has the same outcome :)

FLG - the grain is not the snow, but a result of pushing up the brightness of the darks to such extreme levels

Kanani - I didn't think you got temperatures like that where you are!

Sarah - I did indeed :)

Unknown said...

Snow is magical is it not? These are lovely.....and Rogan is a great lad to help his Dad along.

I love how quite the world seems when it has a fresh blanket of snow covering it.....

So was the snow still there in the morning?

Kim Ayres said...

Tara Marie - some of it is still about. It's partially melting during the day and refreezing at night

iLL Man said...

I like the top one a lot.

I'm a big fan of the yellow tinge that sodium lights give to photos, but since I found the b&w filter on my camera, everything's been getting the treatment.

Pat said...

Everything comes to he who waits...
The photos are good - deep and crisp and even. I'm wary of clicking on a photo just now. Firefox have fiddled with my blog and now I can't go back a page as there is no arrow in the corner.
Everything takes so much longer. Nice one Firefox!

Ché l'écossais said...

Ooh - very Scottish Gothic.
Reminds me of all those ghost stories we got told as kids - which is nice.

LegalMist said...

beautiful...

Mary Witzl said...

No snow here at all, but we are getting some amazing rain! Sadly, very different from Scottish rain...

Anonymous said...

You probably have said this before, but what kind of camera do you have? I am ready to throw mine over the side of a boat.

Kim Ayres said...

iLL Man - I am such a fan of B&W. I have to make the effort to think whether something should stay in colour, rather than the other way round

Pat - if you right-click your mouse somewhere on an empty bit of page, you should get an option that says "Back" and that should take you back to the previous page.

Ché - even more so if I turn them into negatives - quite spooky :)

LegalMist - thank you :)

Mary - what constitutes "amazing rain"?

Gigi - I'm currently using a Fujifilm Finepix S7000 which has 6MP and a 6x optical zoom. However, as soon as it comes out, I'm getting an Olympus SP 590 UZ which is a 12MP camera witha 26x optical zoom.

Unknown said...

The second pic is my favorite. Makes me feel very nostalgic for one thing. I am not sure why. Beautiful

Kim Ayres said...

Dare I ask what one thing that is? Would you email me if you didn't want to comment here?

Kate said...

Lovely images. I like the wider format of the top one. It suits it perfectly. I feel like I'm drawn into the scene.

Kim Ayres said...

Katherine - welcome to my ramblings and thank you for taking the time to leave such a lovely comment :)

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