Pics from the office window ... Episode 1

The room where my desktop computer is located, and where I work when I process my photos from various shoots, is on the upper level of the house and faces the backyard.

Immediately next to the four office windows overlooking the yard is the slanted roof over the sunroom. The roofs blocks my view of any yard immediately adjacent to the house, but I can see some of the rear yard and all of the wooded area beyond the property line. I also can see our detached garage, and the next-door neighbor's backyard.

Four days ago, while I was working on the computer, a cardinal stopped on the aforementioned roof -- about 10 feet from where I was sitting. I scrambled to get my camera and attach a lens with a long focal range (I chose the Canon 20-700mm f/2.8L). By the time I got back to the desk chair to shoot, the cardinal had disappeared.

I decided to keep the camera ready nearby in case the cardinal returned. It hasn't come back while I've been here, but a thought occurred to me two days ago while I was composing the post about the snow pictures. I happened to look over to my neighbor's backyard and the saw the chair on the hill as shown in the photo leading off the post. I liked its framing by the tree on the left and the neighbor's shed on the right.

The camera was still equipped with the 70-200mm lens, so I grabbed it and took the picture. Then I noticed snow formations on the roof ... and a striking shadow of a tree against the garage roof. And I started firing some more shots. I came back to the original shot -- the neighbor's chair -- and changed the orientation to vertical and focused on the lone leaf remaining on the tree in the foreground.

I got the idea to come back to this idea from time to time -- finding things of interest while looking through the office window --- presuming I won't run out of ideas ... or won't quickly become repetitive. We'll see.

All of the shots in today's post were taken with my Canon 6D and the aforementioned 70-200mm lens. I bracketed exposures for processing images through Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software.

Above: A large sack of garden soil left out in the yard that I used as a marker last month. I'm going to have to remember to drag it into the garage at some point soon.

Above and next five below: Various slices of the sunroom roof and sunlight windows in various snow cover or reflection. The first shot below was intended as an exercise in exploiting depth of field.

The angular shadow of a tree on the side and roof of the detached garage (above), and a second frame to compose just the roof portion below. 

Above: Back to the direction of the original composition (the neighbor's backyard chair this time in the background), changing the orientation to vertical and focusing on the orange leaf from a deciduous tree stuck in the conifer in the foreground.