The Tree

Yesterday, thanks to my wife's good memory I was able to revisit a tree that we had seen over 2 years ago. We were cutting our Christmas tree at a tree farm per or annual tradition. I had my handy Canon SD700 at that time and was able to get a decent shot of the tree. I always wanted to go back some time and get a higher quality shot, but never got around to it. So yesterday, I went back as the sun was rising and took quite a few images. I have included three here. Most of the time I was there, clouds were obscuring the sun giving a nice soft light. I took a series of shots on the tripod to generate an HDR image with a little bit of a surrealistic edge - this is the first image. I then took several different shots of portions of the tree, etc. And as often happens as I was about to pack up, the sun broke through and just lit up the ground behind the tree and a nice perimeter around the tips of the branches - this is the second image. Based on the previous nights review of Freeman Patterson's "Photography for the Joy of It", I took the third image. A double exposure of the side limbs. I tried several different alignments of the two images. This creates the dark portions of the image. I used the camera's built in image overlay to create this in camera.

First Post

For my first post I thought I would quickly mention the photographer's that inspire me. While there have been a few over the years, most recently the work of Tony Sweet has had the greatest impact. His work just stirs me inside. The writings and photography of Freeman Patterson is also very much had an impact. I often find that he is behind or at the root of other photographer's work that I admire. His writings on the "Art of Seeing" are highly recommended. While somewhat different but still focused on nature, is the work of Christopher Burkett. If you haven't see one of his large prints, you may not appreciate his work. His images are quite spectacular in person.

As you might have guessed, I tend to focus on nature photography. But I do enjoy creating images with all types of subjects. I often get great satisfaction in photographing people and catching those moments when you get just a glimpse of who they are.

Visit my website http://www.staceyglloyd.com/ and get a little taste of what I have been up to. The site is still really under development, so keep going back as I will be adding more galleries and ordering capabilities as time goes on. Thanks for reading.

Note: The attached photo was taken from a shooting session yesterday with freezing fog in the early morning. What looks like the sun is simply a mercury vapor light in the distance. A nearly wide open f-stop made it large and circular