In recent light of Groundhog's day where the groundhog said that spring would be coming soon, I decided to try and look for at least some sign of life. And although I found no spring flowers, I did find these vibrant red berries, which added a nice pop of color on the otherwise barren landscape. The berries are a natural source of food for some of the creatures that stay here in Michigan during winter, and they use these as sustenance to hold out until spring. I just wanted the focus of the image to be on the berries, and so everything else in the background was meant to be blurry, with the berries on full display as the sole subject of the piece.
I passed this ice droplet hanging off of this branch just as the song "Surface Pressure" from Encanto started playing, and all I could hear was "pressure like a drip, drip, drip that'll never stop", so that's how I got the name for the image on the right. It also kind of reminded me of a piece of fruit, but there weren't any other droplets like it on the tree which is how I came to the name "Forgotten Fruit". I wanted the intricate detailing on the branch to be one of the main focuses as well as the ice on top of it, but I also wanted your eyes to be drawn to the droplet itself, which is why I did my best to center it (but it was cold and my hands were shaky). I thought that everything else in the image being in focus would have distracted from the subject so I had my camera focus in specifically on the branch and droplet.
For these photos, the wind had blown around some snow to create tiny peaks and dunes in the snow. There was a lone snow pebble a top the harder layer of ice, and upon closer inspection it looked almost adrift at sea. I tried to force the snow pebble closer to the camera and the foreground/middle ground, and then make it sort of the main focus of the image by forcing the camera to blur out the background.
I named one of them Vesuvius because looking at the image reminded me of a mild lava flow and the blades of grass the things that would be caught in the flow. I had just watched a history video on Vesuvius, so it was fresh in my mind. I wanted the windblown snow and grass to all flow with the direction of the sun and wind that way the leading lines they create in the photo would make for better motion in the image.
I went on a walk to take these photos, and I noticed this blade of dead grass standing tall and proud which is how I got the name for the plain edited version. Just as I was taking the photo though, a gust of wind blew a bunch of snow right into my eyes. It was not fun. Aside from that, I just tried to get as close as possible to the grass to provide a closeup of the dead plant. I'm really excited for spring to come and for all of the plants to come alive again and for the animals to come out again.