Category: Snow

Flora Photography, Snow

Moving Slowly

by patricia emerson mitchell4 Comments on Moving Slowly

No, I’m not writing about my foot this time! It is, I do believe, improving a lot. I’m not pushing it. I’m also not limping.

But …

I’m currently in the process of redoing my Lightroom set-up. Things were running so slowly on my computer and it was suggested I needed to start a new catalog. Any time I was working on an image I had to wait after each little action. Sometimes I’d have to wait for nearly a minute, which in computer time is, as far as I’m concerned, hours. So I have done a few things to help, including optimizing (yet again: I do that daily!), increasing the cache, and a few other things.

I’d known for some time that I had things set up in a rather crazy way: ALL images were in one huge catalog, so I decided to just dive into the project and have a catalog for each year. This is taking a lot of time, and as Lightroom does its work my computer works horrendously slowly. Typing this, in fact, is taking quite a while.

But once it’s all done I am hopeful that I can again work at a normal speed. I also hope I can figure out just how to compile all my card sets. I won’t go into the issues here, but I can just say it’s confusing at this point, and I think the work is cumbersome. If anyone can tell me though: if I make a duplicate of an image can I put the original in one catalog (the year it was made) and the duplicate in a different one (a “card catalog”?) Do you know?

Ah computers! They simplify. They complicate.

And now have a leaf in the snow. As I am going through images you can imagine I get distracted and have to take time out and work on one!

One Leaf in the Snow, 1.3.13

Color Management, Snow

What We See, What We Think We See

by patricia emerson mitchell4 Comments on What We See, What We Think We See

Snow is white, yes?

Well, not really.

The blue photo of this branch up in Yosemite National Park is what the camera saw. I knew it was bluish, but I didn’t think it was that blue. Our eyes — or really our brain I suppose — cause us to see things differently than truth. (One can apply that to more than sight, as many of us have learned.)

Here, have some blue, as the camera saw the snow and branch:

Snow and a Branch, 12.31.16Snow_and_a_Branch,_12.31.16.jpg

Dan has explained all of this to me — about the snow reflecting this color (if I’m remembering correctly). And a site that is clearly set up for teachers has this  and more:

There’s a scientific reason that snow is white. Light is scattered and bounces off the ice crystals in the snow. The reflected light includes all the colors, which, together, look white.  While your red sweater absorbs all colors except red and reflects red back out for people to see and a yellow tennis ball absorbs all colors except yellow and reflects yellow back out for people to see, snow reflects all colors. And all the colors of light add up to white.

But snow can also look blue or purple or even pink depending on how the sunlight hits it and whether it is in shadow. Some artists try to avoid using pure white paint in their paintings entirely and instead think about what colors they actually see instead of what colors they expect to see. Mixing a little white with other colors might look more like the snow that they see.

What I thought I was seeing was a bit more like this … and still it isn’t truly white:

Snow and a Branch (white adjustment), 12.31.16Snow_and_a_Branch_(white_adjustment),_12.31.16.jpg

Sometimes, though, I give up. Did I really see it the way I’m remembering? After all, this was nearly a year ago! I can always just give up and make it black and white.

Snow and a Branch (B&W), 12.31.16Snow_and_a_Branch_(B&W),_12.31.16.jpg