Yesterday was one of those perfect winter days.  I was a bit late for my little photography excursion so I missed a lot of light. But I did catch the amazing winter sunset.

The air was completely still and the sky was cloud-free. The sun was just about to set and cast long dark shadows over the ice-covered lake. Despite the near sunset, the time was just around three. The lake was still buzzling with life from people iceskating and skiing across it like an icey lake highway. On a barbeque site by a wooden wind shed on a hill facing the water some people had a barbeque party in the snow. Voices of laughter and excitement both from the ice and the barbeque broke the otherwise peaceful air.

It doesn’t get any better than this in winter.

I was lucky to be out on this perfect day for my contribution to Jen’s and my treeproject. Theme of the week: texture. This is a difficult theme for me. To find texture and to make it into an interesting enough photo on top of that. I am not sure I even have ”interpreted” this theme correctly. Jen however is a master at textures, being the artist she is.

The theme also allowed tweaking with filters in Photoshop.

Here they are, my texture photos.

The first photo is a typical old boring ”Marie” photo. Nothing spectacular… But I must say something positive about every photo. I like the combination of the soft colours, the very last glimpses of the soft daylight and the sheer twigs with tiny little cones. They all go together. That is why I even post it.

Next is my ”three-in-one” photo. The same photo but different Photoshop effects. I turned the photo into sepia since this deep into the forest the sun didn’t come through. So the original colours were very dull, but I still like the ”vertical” trees. For the first photo, the most original one, I only added some light brushes as a sunlight effect. The middle photo is tweaked with the stylize filter, adding a cool effect I think with the twigs and branches making the photo less busy. The last one is a couple of blur filters. I kind of like the photos together more than each one separately. All filters are meant to emphasize something with the texture. If they succeed – I don’t know. 🙂

My personal favourite photo is this last one. And I promise – this photo is real, no special tweaking. It is the setting sun lighting up the tree, making it glow in that fantastic red colour, causing an amazing contrast to all the busy dark twigs against the sky. It was surreal. I think I managed to catch that. Nature is god damn amazing!

What do you think? Which photo do you like best, if any? 🙂

Now don’t forget to check out Jen’s texture photos in her blog. She knows her stuff so definitely worth a visit! 🙂 If you want real art, read her blog.