We had a dusting of snow Christmas night, so I was up early and out to try to catch some of it on the ground before it melted. These shots are of what I call Back Creek Pond #2 (since between this and Back Creek Pond #1 they form the headwaters of Back Creek). There was no way to avoid getting my shadow in while maintaining the sweep of the tree shadows across the pond toward the receding end…so I decided to play with it a bit, shooting from my general three levels…standing, ground level using the flip out LCD, and mid-level. Each one is, I think, a striking image on its own, but taken together they make an interesting self-portrait of the photographer at work. 🙂

Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. Interestingly enough I got three different exposures out of Program and iContrast at –1/3EV for the three images. 1) f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. 2) f2.7 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200, and 3) f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. I suspect the short shutter speed on the second shot was because I had the LCD display flipped out. Canon engineers know that using the LCD is inherently less stable than using the eye-level finder, so they bump up the shutter speed for better chances at a sharp shot. I suspect.

Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I also used Auto color temperature to tame the blue in the shadows somewhat, but backed off on the too warm hue that resulted.