I'll just have a coffee!
Famous last words those! I’d already lazed in bed until daylight. Looking out of the bedroom window through dreary eyes and drearier weather I was surprised to see something interesting going on in the Quarry Wood across the valley behind our home. Something about the way the snow was clinging onto the limbs caught me. It looked intriguingly like hoar frost but I knew it couldn’t be. There was some mist chasing around too.
But I really fancied my morning coffee, for which I blame my youngest daughter for buying me a stove top pot for my 60th. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a finer brew, especially when paired with a slab of grass-fed Irish Kerrygold butter. There was my downfall. As I poured said beverage I could already see some degradation in the snow-cladness of the limbs that clung to the side of the moors a mile away.
Still I dillydallied and drained my second cup. It serves me right really for not getting my backside into gear and heading up there right away. Of course you’ve guessed it, the snow had slipped off the limbs by the time I’d walked the distance, it’s much more than a mile as there’s a massive lake between us.
Disappointed with my tardy behaviour I made the best of it with a handful of trees that wintered down at me from a banking.
There was a snowy drizzle in the air, snizzle perhaps, and this added to the atmosphere of chill which I did my best to catch.
I spent a couple of hours in the woods, clambering over slush covered fences that soaked my underwear through my thermal trousers, seeking out the sense of foreboding that can often be sensed in cold, isolated, private places (the woods not my undergarments!)
When my fingers turned blue (I’d forgotten to pack my new Christmas gloves) I returned home and was quite pleased with the first five shots, the wintering trees, but everything else was bin fodder. Well it should have been. It always takes me a few days to press the delete button which I suppose is handy as I do sometimes see something worthwhile when I’m detached from the disappointment.
Back in Lightroom I desaturated, dialled in a touch of clarity, texture and contrast and then added ever so little haze by moving the dehaze slider a few millimetres to the left. I synced the settings across the other four similars and that was it, job done!
Now to get back to video editing for the Creativity Beyond the Camera Club Photoshop layers module.