Posted November 17th, 2012

Hanging On

The weather was good this fall and I kept busy taking full advantage of it to accomplish a lot of the outdoor stuff that is important to my way of life (except not much photography, as one might infer from the dearth of recent content on this site). Even when the snow came to stay in mid-October, I was compelled to get out for a few more loads of firewood from a spot from which I could still haul it home with the ATV until the snow got too deep. The weather turned cold but I steeled myself against it to deal with some deferred projects in the garage as well as necessary vehicle maintenance. Well, now I am in great shape for the months ahead and physically in full winter mode with my major outdoor chores these days being clearing snow and bucking and splitting that wood I cut earlier. But mentally I haven’t slowed down and I can’t quite let go of the idea that it is still autumn ... I seem to be in denial that this is mid-November even as it is snowing, blowing and minus 20 degrees. The tenacious leaf hanging on to this little sapling even in the face of full blown winter conditions strikes me as fittingly symbolic. I shot this photo in dim, gray overcast light that is typical of November. The default RAW conversion was flat and almost textureless with a sickly faint greenish cast which may have resulted from imprecise colour balance or perhaps was weakly reflected colour from the spruce and pine boughs above in the absence of any other significant hues. I tweaked the image in Lightroom to bring out the texture in the snow, in the process producing a sense of directional light that did not really exist, and when I adjusted the colour balance I added a touch of warmth that also did not exist. The extent of the transformation I accomplished was modest; on review, it occurs to me that I was grasping to hang on to brighter days gone by.
Pentax K-5, Tamron AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II LD @ 50mm, f/8