Cracked Ice

Winter struck Calgary with a vengeance this week. More snow in one day than we normally get in all of October.

I went for a walk by the reservoir today with my camera and had taken several shots ( boats covered in snow, trees covered in snow ), when I suddenly saw this patch of frozen water with an amazing tree-like pattern formed by a crack in the ice. I immediately felt that surge of excitement that tells me I have an image to capture and knew that this was to be this weeks picture.

The initial rendering of this image showed some other bits of driftwood and grasses in the foreground but I found these distracting so I had to crop the picture to get the focus of the image to stay on the cracks. I always prefer to take my pictures full screen but sometimes , as in this case, my initial imaging was not what my final imaging dictated so cropping certainly saved the picture.

Two weeks ago, I sent out a picture of the Louise Bridge at Night and pointed out how disappointed I had been with the digital image. I asked for feedback and a friend of mine, George Barr, a doctor and a renown Calgary photographer came to my rescue and spent a few hours giving me some tips on digital photography. My background in traditional large format photography had been counter intuitive when switching to digital photography so hopefully with the feedback and tips from George, the technical aspect of my digital photography will improve. Thanks George!

I am still working through other problems with printing but I think I am getting close to resolving those issues as well. So it has been a good week of learning.

I hope you like this image as much as I do.

[photo for week of 12 October 2009]

© David Butts, 2009