After seeing the post and photograph Winter Wonderland #24 that I posted yesterday, my friend and fellow photographer Keith, asked “How about a closeup?”

Not being quite sure what he meant, I decided that maybe a shot of the wet snow hanging on a branch would satisfy him, so this is the shot I picked.

There are many snow creatures in Acker Woods this time of year and all of them fight for survival. The dogs and I found this snow creature hanging on to this dead limb for dear life. I think he knew that temperatures were going to rise and when that happened he (or she) would be nothing but a puddle of water. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his lifespan would only be a little more than a day. But I’ll bet he lived that day to its fullest!

We got a few inches of wet snow last night here in West Michigan which made for a pretty morning for the doggie walk. No sun, but the way the snow stuck to the trees gave us a winter wonderland look when we opened the front slider blinds. Thank goodness there wasn’t enough snow to break branches or bring down power lines from it’s weight. Just enough to remind us that we live in Michigan.

Since this image was shot on an overcast day I decided that it would make a good black and white image. After doing some minor adjustments to it in Lightroom, I brought it into Silver Effects Pro to give it what they call a “Antique Plate II” effect. Maybe like a soft, wet plate image from the mid to late 1800s.

I took this photograph one rainy night after choir practice with the HP945 camera I keep in the car. Since I don’t use the camera all that often, the image stayed in the camera for a month or so until I uploaded it to the laptop and promptly forgot about it! A couple of days ago I came across it when I was playing with a trial copy of Topaz PhotoFXLab and was struck by the reflection, the color of the sky and the cross atop the bell tower playing counterpoint with the light pole in the distance. To me it symbolizes my belief that the cross always comes before anything else. Hold it high!

The picture attached to this post really doesn’t have much to do with the contents of the post. It’s one of the shots I took about a week ago when we had a dreary day of fog. Those kind of days can make interesting photographs, although they don’t do much for getting rid of the winter blahs!

Today I want to talk about film cameras. Over the years I’ve owned many good systems but every now and then there is one or more that I really “lusted” after and for some reason or another never acquired at the time. Two of those examples are the Leica IIIC and the Canon A1.

My uncle had an on and off affair with cameras back early to mid-50s. I remember him owning a IIIC for awhile, then a Leica IIIF along with some Kodak Retinas. I am still waiting on acquiring a IIIf or a Retina, but a number of years ago a retired WWII friend gave me the IIIC along with a Weston II meter that he bought in Germany back in about 1950. It has the f3.5 Elmar lens, a dim viewfinder. The leather covering disintegrated over the years and has been replaced with black tape. No matter, it has a very warm spot in my heart.

The Canon A1 is a camera I almost bought when it first came out, 1976 I think. It was a revolutionary camera for the time and I actually was one of the first to order one at my local camera store. I owned a couple of Canon AT1s at the time and was having a lot of problem with one of them. The exposures were coming out overexposed. I tried everything in processing and came to the conclusion it was the camera, not me. When my friendly dealer checked the shutter speed he discovered that at all speeds above 1/125 the shutter speed stayed at 1/125. Needless to say that soured my taste for electronic shutters and I ditched the Canons and bought a pair of Pentax MXs,

Fast forward to 2012. Our local online Auction house (jnjauctions.com) had a Canon A1 with a 50mm f1.4 lens, winder (not the MA motor drive) and some other accessories in the auction. A week later with a $25 bid the camera became mine! I haven’t had a chance to shoot with it yet, but have installed new batteries and everything seems to be working fine. When the budget permits I’ll get a roll of film and let you know the results.

It’s February at Acker Lake and this year that means snow! So far it hasn’t been all that bad, not above my hiking shoes. We had a few warm days the last of January with snow in the open areas disappearing, but now it’s all back. Most days were getting a light snow on and off during the day, just enough to shovel the front and back decks. Since Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow last Saturday, maybe that means we’ll have an early spring.

Shirlee and I celebrated our tenth anniversary last Friday, February 1st. Doesn’t seem like it’s been all that long. You can tell we’re getting older as, due to the weather and Shirlee’s COPD we stayed home and had a Chef’s Salad for dinner and watched TV! That’s okay, just to be able to spend time together is what really matters, not what you do or where you go.

I shot this photo of Duke on our anniversary morning. He decided that we needed to take one of the trails through the woods on our morning walk. While he is a relatively good dog, he is not good enough to walk in the woods without his leash. He asked me to take it out of the finished photo though as he didn’t want his other doggie friends to know he still has to be on a leash. Sort of like still needing training wheels on a bike.