For this month's contest, my first thought was to use a gimmicky image depicting "Winter in Santa Barbara" or So. Cal. or even Florida, but rechecking the first paragraph for this contest we have, "..this month's theme "Winter." You can submit any image...that captures cold, winter, or freezing elements." So I quickly tossed out that notion. Secondly, I decided not to repost my picture of the Yosemite Chapel, afterall I used it last month. This lead me to my archives and a search for anything "Winter" within my perceived idea of what this contest was about. Luckily for me, I don't have too many of those types of photos and I came up with 31 images depicting 10 different scenes. 31 because I have been trying to learn how to Bracket images. I settled on making 6 edited scenes. Surprisingly, they all are from Yosemite National Park, and were taken between 6:30am and 8:30am, the same morning, coincidentally my Chapel image was also taken during this short window.
Now with my RAW images edited, I must choose but, no more than 3..."Oh this is SO DIFFICULT"...I do love "my photography", and then throw in the personal connection, time investment from planning, booking, traveling, braving the elements, searching, capturing, returning, sorting, culling, editing - not to mention gear and money spent on a hobby - choosing between them is like trying to choose which grandchild is "your favorite"!?! For me that would be truly impossible, but this is just a few images, right? I could not, well more like I refused to choose, and came up with the idea of a poll, where I asked my kids to rank 6 images 1-6, favorite to least, include spouses and children and friends/children and send me the rankings. It took a bit of work, several sheets of paper, I used a weighted scoring system, and VOILA I
have my 3 images for the contest, for which I didn't vote - that was reserved in case of any ties. Fifteen different opinions were used, 8 adults, 7 children. No tampering with the weighting system, everyone's votes were counted equally. Images 1-3 are in the contest, with 4-6 posted here.
Which is your favorite?
Snow Flocked Trees - Yosemite Valley - Yosemite NP - California
Nikon Z6 ii
30mm · f/22 · 1/20 sec. · ISO 100
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