Week 50: Black and White Christmas

black and white

This topic was officially "black and white portrait" but the snow is so awesomely pretty here I decided that my "portrait" would be of the snow.

On Wednesday this week, we had the beginnings of a pretty bad snow storm.  It  grew and got nasty, continued through Thursday and by the end of the squalls we had received 54 cm of snow.  Overnight last night and into today, we got another 15 cm.  You can imagine how that makes things look.  Everything is so clean and beautiful and I chose Hermione in favour of groceries this morning.

You might also be able to imagine how all that snow has made the driving...horrible.  The snow came too quickly for the plows to stay on top of it so it accumulated under the cars that were still (against police pleas) out and about.  Now the roads consist of loose snow, narrow lanes and six inch deep ruts that unexpectedly pull the car madly off in all directions.  I headed out this morning despite the grave danger (!) to capture the beauty.  I spent an hour this morning at Whitefish Island and an hour this afternoon with Maxine and the boys on the trails at Connor Road.

Man, we live in the most beautiful place on earth.

Last night I finally downloaded the Nik software that became free last March.  I have no idea what all the different programs do but there is software to develop photos into black and white.  I also have no idea how to properly use the program but I went ahead anyway...I just chose a photo I wanted to make black and white then scrolled through the presets and chose one I liked.  You should see some differences between all the photos even though they would all be considered black and white, because the processing was different for each one.

This one might actually still be in colour.

And here are some birds from this morning.  This woodpecker was vying with the chickadees for the fresh bird seed in the feeders.

My blue jay was enticed off of the tree with some seed strategically placed on the bridge railing.

I know that it's not quite winter yet but don't these photos make you think it is?