Month #44 - Retrospective of Daily Photos posted from 5/04 to 12/09 (most viewers for the month)

January 2008 - This is the type of scene that turns me on photographically. A spot that's less than a mile from home, not mobbed by a herd of other photographers - quiet, tranquil and offering a myriad of photographic opportunities. I could (& did) spend hours working a place like this. Here is what I wrote on New Year's Day 2008 when posting this photo -

1/1/08 - Happy New Year
Spent a lot of time along the edge of this pond playing hide-and-seek with the sun. After shooting a number of shots where the sun was visible and not, I decided that visible was the way to go. The sun mostly had other ideas.
A lot of the time was spent fussing over foreground and background composition details. As an example, when I finally settled on this spot the first several shots were "wasted" when I noticed that I didn't have the separation needed between the cattail tops and the far bank (overlapped - not good). That coupled with how wide to shoot in order to get a good representation of trees on the far bank (they all didn't look this good) and where to put the sun relative to the rest of it all took time. It's the type of time I enjoy spending - and the reason why I was lost when the D300 first arrived and I didn't have an L-Bracket so that I could put it on a tripod and compose slowly and deliberately. The foggy morning coupled with winter's lack of color made the coloring (a faint hint) attractive in the final image.
A graduated neutral density filter was needed to control the bright upper left area. As a result, the reflection is brighter than the sun in the resulting image.
Happy New Year.