Photographing with my Guts

I admit I was enjoying the eternal autumn as opposed to winter.  40 degrees and sunny in January?  No snow?  Yes, please.

However, I confess that a sticky snowfall followed by a single digit day of strong sunshine is breathtakingly beautiful.  These are shots I took this afternoon, some in my yard, and some only a mile or two from my house in the nearby countryside.

I took 187 shots in total, and put 23 up here.  That's a pretty good ratio for me.  I love digital photography because it's so inexpensive to take photos and there's no guilt associated with not using ones I don't like because they don't cost me anything.  I take at least 20 times as many photos as I ever use - probably far more.

So if I take that darn many, how do I select the ones I use?  My photo editing and selecting process is very visceral.  The ones that make the cut are the ones that give me an emotional response.  They make something tighten or tingle in the pit of my stomach, or the best photos are the ones that cause me to stop breathing for a moment.  When I feel that, I know I have captured something worthwhile.  At a minimum, selected photos have to make me feel.  And then all I can do is hope that my readers have a similar response to at least some of them.

For this photography adventure, I was accompanied by my whole support team including spouse and both dogs, but the Bean was the most enthusiastic companion, eagerly sniffing the fresh cold air for interesting scents, and assaulting me with her tongue every time I ventured within range.

I hope you, my dear readers, enjoy a few of these.  If you would like to see them as a slide show without all the surrounding distraction of my blog layout, just click on the first one, then flip through them.  If you are curious, my favorite one is the barn window.