Day 33 - Snowfall Warning

A heavy-snowfall warning in Fredericton came to flaky fruition this afternoon when we had 20 to 25 centimeters of the white stuff dumped on us in a matter of hours. I took this photograph at about 5:15 p.m., just when dusk was settling in.

Now, I'm going to admit something to you. This photo is a bit of a cheat. In order to enhance the blizzard-like feel, I closed the aperture as far as it would go on the camera, then chose the slowest shutter speed I could get without allowing in too much light. I think the settings were f8 for the aperture and 1/6th of a second for the shutter speed.

What does this do? It increases the depth of focus and allows each snowflake to move quite a distance while the shutter is open. This makes it look like there is more snow in the air than there actually is. If I had taken the shot with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, for example, each flake would have been frozen in the air, individual, visible. This way, because their movement is captured in the picture, it looks like there are more, that the air is literally thick with snow.

The second, smaller photo is more evidence of cheating but, this time, a cheat that actually takes away from the impact of the photo. I made a copy of the top photo, then used iPhoto's "Enhance" function on it. The program automatically deepened the colours of the trees, mailbox and pole. It's a cheat because it's an artificial way to "improve" the photo. It is a failure because, by deepening these colours, it makes the objects more visible and the snow seem less overwhelming.

Neat, eh?