Momentarily Captivated

The Problem: Everything is Dull and Gray

Living in the northeast of the United States comes with lots of cloudy winter days. This, coupled with an abundance of dormant vegetation, means the natural landscape is severely lacking in color for 4-5 months out of the year.

While it might look interesting to me when I’m out there enjoying the crisp air and mountain views, if I just point and shoot, most of my photos would end up looking something like the photo above.

Objectively, this photo is not a bad photo (except for some dust on the sensor, as I was still waiting on my sensor cleaning kit to arrive when this photo was taken, and I hadn’t yet learned how to edit it out in post-processing).

While it has interesting elements like the background layers of hills shrouded in mist, after a while I get tired of shooting endless shades of gray. It can get depressing, especially when I haven’t seen the sun for a week or more.

The Solution: Not Everything is Dull and Gray

But you have to know where to look and in my neck of the woods that usually means near the ground.

Unlike many other plants that live in wet temperate climates, moss doesn’t turn gray (or pale brown) when it goes dormant in the winter. There is already a lot of green in this exposure and, with just a little bit of editing magic, I can bring out the color to make the final image much more vibrant without feeling false.

Another place to go looking for color is near water, specifically small creeks or ponds (fallen trees near riverbanks are also good places to look.). During autumn, leaves will fall into the water and some will get trapped amongst the sticks and stones. Submerged leaves might retain some of their orange, red and yellow hues for a few months.

I took an exposure of this small mountain stream from the side of the road. Again, a little bit of editing brings out the color.

Green moss on the left and orange leaves on the right create a nice touch of warmth in the middle of a long cold winter.

The Other Problem: Snow Covered What Little Color Was Left

The scenario: a foot of fresh fluffy snow was just dropped on every square inch of the globe within fifty miles of my location and no sunlight is in the foreseeable forecast. Beautiful as it may be, I still want some color.

As it turns out, a touch of blue looks really good on snow, and it is really easy to achieve either in the original shot with appropriate white balance settings or in post-processing with color temperature adjustment.

Now with a just a slight alteration in white balance and some adjustments to the shadows the same image elicits an emotion that is paradoxically both calm and vibrant.

Don’t Let Winter Get You Down

Winter is truly and uniquely beautiful but let us not discount that it can be equally dreary. Sometimes a little bit of color is all that’s needed to lift us up. It is out there, it just might take a little more effort to find than in other seasons.