Winter Wonderland

Okay, you've all been looking at my mug on the page long enough, it's time to put up some fresh content.  Over here, we just had about 30cm's of snow get dumped on the city.  That, coupled with a day off from my Day Job meant that there was only one possible thing on my schedule for today.  Sit on my couch and watch television.  Luckily, my conscience kicked in and guilted me into leaving the comforts of home to walk outside in the snow.  Ever since my Boys of Summer photograph, I've kind of had a soft spot for picnic tables.  In the back of my mind, I had planned on trying to find some picnic tables after the first snowfall to try and take some photos.  Luckily, our first snowfall was rather wet and stuck very well to the trees.  I would have liked the sky to be a little more blue, but I guess my emails about that didn't make it to Mother Nature.  It's not always easy to photograph snow as it is so bright that it can easily trick your camera.  To try and make sure that my snow is the right colour, I take test readings by pointing my camera directly down at the snow by my feet.  I then shoot in Manual Mode and play around with the shutter speed.  There was some additional work playing with Levels in Photoshop, but I think that I got the snow to look fairly white here.  The first photograph was taken at f/8, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 24mm, the second one was taken at the same settings.  In the end, I guess that getting off of the couch was a good idea.  Now hopefully next time I have such a good idea I'll remember to wear winter boots as well.  It's not the best time of the year to be walking around with wet socks.