Rainy afternoons are always more productive than sunny ones.

I like the way this photo makes me feel. It may not be technically sound, but I love the that you can really get a sense of a calming rainy afternoon. And after the ridiculous April we’ve seen making rain seem miserable, I’d enjoy this photo to remind me how great a thunderstorm can be.

I traveled to Ohio from Wisconsin and found that 10 degrees makes a huge difference! Everything may have been wet, but it was GREEN! Wisconsin has yet to have leaves on trees, I was so happy to be surrounded by lush greenery! (I took this photo during a wedding last year and keep it in a folder called “Inspiration” that I can always go back to and find images I liked for one reason or another. Thought it very fitting to share now :)

The past two days have brought in a lot of fog. It acts like a giant diffuser, making everything bright, but evenly lit. I keep a small point and shoot in my purse for times when I’m out & about not intentionally on a photographic excursion, but because I have come across one too many moments when I REALLY wished I had a camera. And the one on my phone doesn’t cut it. I don’t typically carry my pack of lenses when going to the bank, so my Canon Powershot does very nicely tucked in a bag.

Anyway, I was driving down Lake Drive & felt compelled to get outta my car & take a walk. I had a teacher once tell us to go out & shoot “atmospheric” conditions. It was a dumb assignment. I think I submitted an image I had taken of rain on glass that I had shot the year previous-he wasn’t the wiser & I passed with flying colors-let’s call it senioritis. I did some major digging around in archives & revived a hard drive so you could see it here. I thought of that lame class when I was out today and thought “I suppose this would be considered atmospheric.”

I’ve spent the better half of my Saturday playing in Lightroom with these. I rarely have time to play, since I work on other client’s work most days. But found myself getting lost in them. These could take a few routes, but thought they should stay low in contrast & with subtle color. I wanted to reflect & show the softness of the fog that dulls everything. After taking out the branches & floating objects in the foreground, I decided to keep them after all. I think it adds dimension that grounds it a bit better. The others below are a little cleaner. I think I have a million different versions with variations of color, crop & detail. When I turned it around, I thought it looked like a tree. I pushed a few of these far enough that there’s a bit of artifacting (it was shot with a small camera & can’t hold) so for fun, here’s some studies of fog & composition, nothing special, but I thought they were nice. Doesn’t the beach shot look like it’s the source of all the fog coming from the pool of water?