“Did you come east on the Parkway to get here?” asked a booktable visitor yesterday at the winery. “There’s ice on Mabry Mill pond” she said, herself a photographer, and, seeing my photo-notecards, she knew I’d want to know such a thing.
So, as smile-weary as I was after four long hours of the last of four such days, when four o’clock came, I cleared the table of my dog-and-pony-show paraphenalia in two trips out to the car, and headed west toward Meadows of Dan and Mabry Mill, a few parkway miles away.
The beauty of a visit to Maybury Mill in December is that there’s nobody there but me. And a few ducks. If you click on the image above it will take you to a larger image on Flickr; this is actually a (poorly done) merging of three different images: a normal exposure, 2 1/2 stops underexposed, and one that is 2 1/2 stops over exposed. This is a rudimentary first attempt at what is called HDR photography. High Dynamic Range is a technique available to digital photographers to take advantage of the computer’s ability to create an image where both the highlights and shadows are optimally exposed. The three images were slightly out of register, even though I used a tripod, so this image is a little blurry, and the difference between the shadows and highlights was probably not significant enough on this image to do justice to the technique. More not-quite examples sure to come on FFF in coming months!
What a stunning affect, Fred. I love this time of year on the Parkway when you can really experience the “anatomy” of the land.
Fred,
Seems I can’t drag myself away from FFF right at the moment. It is wonderful to wander around such places as the Parkway and Mountains at “off season” times of year. I love that feeling!
Finding vicariously following your SLOW ROAD HOME Odyssey to be fascinating …. good luck to you!
Great hearing about the evolving photo techniques as well. I want to get further into that myself. Which camera are you using these days? Still the same one you had last year?
Steve (Dubai)
The “large version” reminds me of the black and white photos taken by my father that my mother then colorized with some sort of oil paints. It’s a beautiful photo! Thanks for sharing it with us.
WOW! Aren’t you glad you followed her prompt? What a stunning pic, Fred.
We went by the mill araound 10 AM yesterday on the way to church in Willis and the ice was even more spectacular. Much of it had melted by the time we returned home around 2 PM. Of course I didn’t have my camera and if I would have I could never have achieved near the quality of your picture. Sorry I didn’t know you were at the winery or we would have come by.
Nice shot Fred, I’ve been playing with HDR myself these days. I put some of my stuff on my sites. I am actually going back through some of my older shots and converting them.
I see you are also getting some exposure on the Virtual Blue Ridge Parkway Site at Floyd County Naturalist/Photographer’s Weblog Published as a Memoir of Place. Looks like pretty good press.