February 24, 2009; Day 298.

The Ice Sword of Damocles.

A friend of mine recently showed me a set of photos he had taken of icicles. I immediately recognized the challenges he faced. He could only photograph them from the outside, which meant front or side-lit specimens taking on the colors of the nearby and unflattering background. The building was the part you noticed first in the images; sometimes the icicles were hard to find.

This morning, I saw this icicle from my east-facing kitchen window and guessed that the rising sunlight would strike it and not be eclipsed by this neighbor’s house. A week ago, this might not have been true (the sun's position is shifting north each day). I chose the house as a background because I knew that it would not be lit by the sun and thus would be darker.

I set up the camera, selected my 70-210mm lens, and waited. Luckily, the eastern horizon was cloudless, giving me an unobstructed orange sun. The backlit icicle scatters the orange sunlight very nicely. Unfortunately, the background is not great; the sky is bright and the house has a lot of snow-filled brush and trees in front of it. For some reason, I wanted the chimney in the frame to identify the background as a house.

I did take this alternate shot, zoomed in to fill the frame with the background, but the icicle has less texture and I got some green fringing in the shot.

Raw: Color Temperature: 5300K; Tint: 0
Raw: Exposure: 0.3
Raw: Recovery: 100
Raw: Saturation: 8
PS: Healing Brush to remove some lens dust rendered as spectral highlights by the sun
PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity
PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur

February 24, 2009; Day 298.

The Ice Sword of Damocles.

A friend of mine recently showed me a set of photos he had taken of icicles. I immediately recognized the challenges he faced. He could only photograph them from the outside, which meant front or side-lit specimens taking on the colors of the nearby and unflattering background. The building was the part you noticed first in the images; sometimes the icicles were hard to find.

This morning, I saw this icicle from my east-facing kitchen window and guessed that the rising sunlight would strike it and not be eclipsed by this neighbor’s house. A week ago, this might not have been true (the sun's position is shifting north each day). I chose the house as a background because I knew that it would not be lit by the sun and thus would be darker.

I set up the camera, selected my 70-210mm lens, and waited. Luckily, the eastern horizon was cloudless, giving me an unobstructed orange sun. The backlit icicle scatters the orange sunlight very nicely. Unfortunately, the background is not great; the sky is bright and the house has a lot of snow-filled brush and trees in front of it. For some reason, I wanted the chimney in the frame to identify the background as a house.

I did take this alternate shot, zoomed in to fill the frame with the background, but the icicle has less texture and I got some green fringing in the shot.

Raw: Color Temperature: 5300K; Tint: 0
Raw: Exposure: 0.3
Raw: Recovery: 100
Raw: Saturation: 8
PS: Healing Brush to remove some lens dust rendered as spectral highlights by the sun
PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity
PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur