Blogrolls and Tamaracks

I have a relatively small blogroll, which keeps me busy enough. Yesterday, Thursday, I checked in and saw that I had 31 posts to go through and more came in while I was doing just that. I commented on most although most of my comments were and are terse, but that is kind of the way I am – succinct. You may not be able to tell that from my posts, but some would take much more space to write of the same things that I do.

The backlog tends to occur when I miss a day, which I did on Wednesday. Checking blogs in the morning is such a habit that when I miss, I tend not to think about them until the next day.

On Wednesday morning, I went to the nearby park shortly after sunrise. It was a clear morning, and I suspected that the few tamarack (aka larch) trees might be in full colour. Their colour mostly changes  after the broad-leafed deciduous trees are all but done. The tamaracks are needle-leafed, deciduous trees – the only conifers that I know of that turn colour and lose their leaves.

The photos turned out not badly although it can be a tight thing to avoid the houses around he park. You will see that I didn't avoid them in one photo (the third, below), but I liked the framing of the foreground tree so much that I took that photograph anyway. I did open the aperture so the houses wouldn't be too sharp, and I think it worked not too badly.

This first photo is my least favourite. I think there's just too many distractions on either side.

The next photo is of just one of those above trees, and I think it works much better. The colour came out differently for whatever reason, but I like that better too. I included just a bit of the reflection, and I chose to also utilize the barren branches of the huge background tree for effect. I did this photo first, and it is the one that I envisioned best. The others were extras in a sense.

I've already mentioned this next photo, but it was a casual shot. I saw the framing of the tree as I was getting back in the car, so I grabbed the camera again but didn't bother using the tripod. It was a quick snap before heading back home. I do still like it, though. Unfortunately, I can't see a way to take this photo by using the tree as a frame but also excluding the houses. 

I wonder if I will find any tamaracks elsewhere. If I were to find more, I would need both the weather and the colour to converge, and that convergence just might not happen at this time if year. We have a had a very nice November as far as Novembers go, but one can't expect such clement weather to continue. In point of fact, we had quite a weather-shift just yesterday when it became cold and windy.