Learning by doing

I knew I needed a darker background for Aegis's white body to contrast against as well as the snow, as well as the snow flakes themselves. There is an evergreen hedge by the driveway, and that seemed the like best option and i could easily use my car as a working platform.

I figured i would need a fast shutter to try and freeze the flacks in mid air, so i went with my 50mm F1.8 lens and while i wasn't wrong per-say... its just that i found that it made so short a depth of field that very few flakes were in the right plane for them to be visible.

I realize now it would have been a better idea to used a much longer zoom lens so that there would be more space between the camera and Aegis for flakes to be falling in as well as increasing the depth of feild so they would be in focus. and maybe an additional light source to at a little more light variation to Aegis's form. (I had to push the curves pretty hard to get what variation i did.)

Since i had to work with the camera and such i couldn't wear my gloves, and did i mention that it was a refreshing 18F out? I posed Aegis, shaped the tripod, affixed the camera to the tripod, and set most of the camera settings before heading out so spend as little time outside as possible.

The camera was mounted to a gorillapod which i shaped to be as low as possible to keep the camera on the same level as Aegis while resting on the same surface. I draped a dish towel over the camera to prevent it getting wet form the falling snow. and since that covered the top of the camera i used a wired remote trigger. the whole thing had a great old school feeling to it. Being under a cloth, pressing a button on the end of a wire.

Since i couldn't get the picture i was really looking for, i crudely photoshoped it together. I'll be the first one to admit im no Radiant Dreamer, but at least this shows how hard it was actually snowing at the time.