Black and white images are very interesting with certain subjects. It just so happens that snow and bleak skies can be one of those subjects. How convenient. I live someplace with bleak skies and have a new covering of snow. Sometimes I just feel blessed.

Saturday the woman and I went to the book store and I perused a bunch of photography books. Landscapes are things that I have found fun to shoot but I really do not have not taken the time to educate myself in them. I sat about and tried to gather a few ideas. One of the themes I kept being drawn to was low contrast subjects with high detail–think white things on white backgrounds but with often abrupt changes in contrast.

So Sunday I went to the Holden Arboretum looking for some poplar trees that I could play off of the newly-fallen snow. On the banks of Corning Lake there are a bunch of them and I took some snaps. The sun was wildly variable which made for entertaining metering but really let you pick your shot. You want even light? Here it is. You want stark shadows? Wait a minute.

FYI, this is my first real batch of b&w work that I have run through Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro. I resisted purchasing this product due to its exorbitant price but after playing with the trial version, I cannot imaging trying to do b&w by hand in Photoshop. It is just so nice and easy to make a variety of changes and really narrow in on what makes the photo interesting.