Trees and Sky

I've mentioned before my love of trees and my affinity for taking pictures of their bare branches in the winter. There are certain trees, in my opinion, that make the best branch against sky sort of pictures. There are also certain skies that help to contribute to such an image. Today I found a really great mix of sky and tree, and much to the chagrin of my children, pulled over to the side of the road just long enough to snap a few pictures.

This is a picture of the top of some billowy clouds right before we started our decent on the plane ride home from Hawaii. Okay, not really. It is a shot from my bedroom window this morning. When I saw the sky, I knew it would be a great day to find some bare trees. A bright blue sky with patchy, white clouds, to add lots of contrast, is my backdrop of choice for a tree-sky photo- Thursday, February 23.

This picture contains a nice sky background, but not my favorite type of bare tree. There are far too many little, tiny branches for my liking. I did, however, like the one little bird sitting in those little tiny branches. Also taken from my bedroom window this morning- Thursday, February 23.

This is the kind of tree, posed in front of just the right kind of sky, that entices me to throw on the four ways and hang out the driver's side window to get a picture (after pulling over, of course). I love the thick, distinct branches and how they twist and bend- Thursday, February 23.

This is the same picture, solarized. It is an option on the color curve menu in P.S.E. Most pictures just look really scary with this setting, but I thought this one looked pretty cool- Thursday, February 23.

In case any keen eyes noticed the tree with the annoying little branches in the lower left corner of the solarized picture and wondered where it came from, it was part of the original photo. I couldn't get a shot without it from the car window, so I painted it out in P.S.E. I am actually pretty surprised at how easy it is to get rid of things you don't like in a picture. Which has made me start to wonder about all those high quality reading materials filled with amazing photos of the stars in the check out lines. I mean, what if Brad and Angelina's new twins don't really have alien heads at all!? This changes everything- Thursday, February 23.