Keep It Simple, Stupid! The winter is full of opportunities to simplify your images. In a very basic form, all it takes is a few lines. Or a lot of lines, like the frozen web on the left. It wasn’t just frost, but proper ice crystals that made the threads look like a band of pearls.

The slight dusting of snow we got earlier in the week together with the frost provided me with some nice subjects and I could stop kicking myself about the missed opportunities yesterday. I even found something that was very much like the ”Arches” picture that failed miserably as taken with the mobile phone. But already as I was taking pictures of this small bush (or a small birch), I realised that it will be very difficult to bring out the lines when there’s almost no natural contrast at all. So it took a surprising amount of effort to process a simple picture in Lightroom, the trick is to deliberately underexpose a little and then boost the contrast and curves and finally I even used the adjustment brush on the branches to lift them from the background and finished off with a vignette. And it still doesn’t work.

But then I found an easier way to photograph the same subject. The flipside. On the opposite side of the bush (yes, it’s the same bush), the branches were visible so the lines were clearly defined. Processing was easy – deliberate over-exposure for a high-keyish effect with a boost in blacks and clarity and then I just had to clone a small distraction in a corner. And add a slight vignette of course, I’ve taken the habit of routinely add vignettes to almost all my pictures.

Keep it simple. On a wonderful winter’s day as it was today, it was easy. In the immortal words of Frank Drebin in Naked Gun: I love it!