Everything Is Frozen

Every once in a while I decide on a whim to toss up a photograph that I'm maybe not 100% about.  Sometimes there is very little public reaction to it, and sometimes all of you out there surprise me by taking to the image that I present.  So, after hearing in the news that we have just gone through the coldest month of February since 1904, I figured this was the right time to toss out a photograph that I was feeling a little bit frosty about.  These two photographs were taken while I was also taking my ice fog photographs near the Victoria Bridge.  In that moment where I was wandering around just before the sun finally came out, I stumbled upon theses little staghorn sumac leaves.  Don't worry, I had to look that up as well.  This isn't the first time I've stumbled upon these leaves, and I always end up taking photographs of them because I really like their bright red colour.  On this day, it was kind of hard to find some red as it was rather cloudy outside, and as you can see, it was rather covered in ice and snow.  I might have gotten some better shots after the sun had finally come out, but once that happened I was quickly on my way back to the bridge.  So, I got home, looked at my photos and these two found their way to my 'to be ignored' pile, where they have been sitting patiently for the last several weeks.  I finally came around to giving them another look the other day and played around with them a little bit and thought, why not, let us put them on the site and see if they sink or swim.  My only real complaint about the photographs was that I didn't properly capture the colour.  So, using Photoshop and the Colour Balance tool, I delicately began to add a little bit of red back into my image. I'm willing to admit that it's still not perfect in my eyes, but I also like them enough to get them off of the 'ignored' pile and onto the site.  The first photograph was taken at f/4, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 70mm and the second photograph was taken at f/4, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 63mm.  Trying to end things on a positive note since I've already said what I didn't like, I really liked the definition of the snowflakes on the right hand side of the photographs and I'm always a fan of a good blurred background.  These guys should be thawing out soon enough, hopefully those of you who have had enough of this winter will be as well.