Day 20

We had more snow today in central Illinois….an additional 4 inches on top of the snow that we already had on the ground.  I raced home after work to snap a few pictures.  Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of areas of interest in our yard at this time of year and I didn’t have time to drive somewhere else without losing the sunset.  So, I made do.  And I’m glad I did because I ended up with some beautiful photos (at least in my humble opinion). 

This shot is of a portion of our bottle tree, which is basically a tree made out of metal and then decorated with wine bottles.  The tree was made by my husband out of rebar and then painted black.  I’ll have to make sure to get a photo of the entire tree sometime.  I was able to capture the sunset at the tree line in the background and with the use of a low f-stop, it presented some nice bokah.

According to www.bottletree.com, the origin of the bottle tree can be traced back to Africa. Evidently, it was believed that shiny objects placed around the home would attract evil spirits away from the family. With the tragedy of the slave trade, the tradition found its way to North America and continued to evolve into the hanging of bottles in trees to "trap" the evil spirits.  Over the years the bottle tree has become a very unique Southern gardening tradition.

Editing: none, this was a SOCC (straight-out-of-camera) shot!

• f/2.8
• 1/2500 sec
• 400 ISO
• 50mm

This is a shot of ATV tracks in our front yard.  The tracks were left by my neighbor, who had graciously plowed our drive with his snowblade attachment.  There are several things I love about this photo: 

• the beam of sunset in the distance 
• the texture of the tire tracks in the snow
• the pinkish/orange cast of the snow due to the sunset.

Pretty!

Editing: cropping, pioneer woman boost action, curves adjustment

• f/2.8
• 1/2500 sec
• 400 ISO
• 50mm