chasing the focus

Yesterday I missed at least two potentially great photos. The first one was on my way to work – I was late already so I didn’t stop… The row of maple trees down the road was covered with frost, the light came beautifully from behind them, through thick mist so that there was no distraction behind the maples as usually there is.

The second one was this pic. I was coming home from the camera club board meeting. The mist floated on the main street so that it covered a lot of the distractions and was like a soft blanket under the Christmas lights. I was busy going home and the traffic was pretty heavy – so I thought I’d come back later when hopefully the traffic would be a bit lighter. Only, two-three hours later when I went there was pretty much no mist left. So learn this: No matter how busy/tired/lazy/what ever you are, if you see a photo-op – then STOP and take the picture!

I think this is more or less (probably less) decent but in no way brilliant – not even good. I just couldn’t get the focus right, again. Also I couldn’t get a shot with no cars in it (probably should go there at 4 am instead of 10 pm) and the neon lights are just plain ugly. And someone, please teach me how to get decent photos of lights? So that they don’t become blown-out blobs in the middle of pitch-dark blackness… However, this photo is pretty much unedited: I only cropped it, added the copyright text and did a slight sharpening/contrast boost with unsharp mask.