I haven’t had much time this week, preparing for the holiday, to either do photography or pull together an Advent 3 post.
Happy hour.
Winter time.
Time for me?
Winter time weather.
Time to light a candle.
Mountain time.
This week’s squares, somewhat late, except that I decided to light my fourth candle early, on the solstice instead of waiting for Sunday. It just seemed like the right time to add some light.
Maybe next week I’ll be more pulled together…maybe.
These are a few pictures I selected to give a sense of how I’ve experienced December. I experimented with noise reduction settings in Adobe Lightroom to try and soften these. In Seattle in winter the light levels are fairly low so pictures often have a grainy texture. This setting can sometimes be used to give an almost painting-like feel to pictures.
More explanation:
I’ve been working on a family calendar for 2018. I started it three times but kept getting interrupted. It takes time to go through the many photos I take most months. I decided to do a push to get the calendar finished: it is something my grandmother and father really like (I use Mixbook, which allows me to add family birthdays which is a useful feature. No doubt other companies do as well. I find it easier to stick with one outfit since I’ve gotten used to the way this one works and the quality is good.)
So I’m using the Twelve days of Christmas to put together one calendar page a day, going backwards from December. As I review photographs taken every month I am hoping to post a gallery for each month. As I do this I’m experimenting with different Lightroom options and effects.
Not very clever: it is Latin for “spring in winter”. It’s happening right now in Seattle. The news is full of blizzards, and for some that is marvelous (see post by Karyn here), but here the air is full of the scent of daphne odora and “that plant that starts with an ‘s’, smells divine and blooms in January”.
Snowdrops in the moss.
The leaves and buds of bulbs are thrusting vigorously up through the mulch of partially decayed leaves…but winter is not necessarily over. This little party will end with a shift of the wind. In some ways that makes it all the more precious. For that reason it is also accompanied by a sense of urgency to get outside.
This differs from what we call the “pineapple express” which is warm but comes with a lot of rain.
