Fresh Truckee Snow!

Yes, I'm excited about the snow this year. We are way behind schedule on the amount of it that we have received. I shouldn't complain after last year's incredible amount of snow that we got. It was a bit much last year... Last night, it started up again so I grabbed the camera and headed down to Downtown Truckee to try to get more Christmas holiday themed photos. Unfortunately, it was mix of rain and snow in Downtown and there wasn't much snow on the ground, but I ended up with this shot of a favorite little art gallery down there anyway. The Piper Gallery exhibits all paintings and sculptures, no photography, but I still love checking out the work there anyway.

Shot with the Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens. ISO 3200, a lens aperture of f/4.0, and it was a handheld 1/30 second exposure. The lens image stabilization was on, and Photoshop's AI noise reduction was used as ISO 3200 produces a lot of digital noise with this camera.

When I woke up this morning, we actually had a little layer of snow around town. It was looking great! Definitely not a large snow storm, but it was nice to see that little bit of white layer on the ground. Everything looks so clean, crisp, and photogenic. So I took a short walk with the camera, across the street to Donner Lake here in Truckee, California.

These were both also shot with the Canon 5DS R and the 24-105mm lens. A much lower ISO of 200 was used. Both were 1/200 second handheld shots, and both had small lens apertures.

The top shot of the dock is a classic Donner look, I like including that sunburst for a little added visual interest. The small lens aperture of f/20 helps create the star effect to the sunburst. I liked the bottom shot of the shoreline and Donner Summit because of the somewhat repetitive patterns to the little lake waves, the shoreline, and the clouds. In my opinion, it created a visual pleasing look.

Yup, I enjoy that snow! We're supposed to get more tonight. Fingers crossed that it will actually be a decent amount but the forecast isn't looking good for that.

Thanks for looking and I hope you all have a great day!

Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com

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Downtown Truckee Christmas Slideshow

Please enjoy this little slideshow I put together of Downtown Truckee Christmas photos.  All of these images are available as large fine art print. Thank you for looking!

-Scott Thompson

New Snowy Downtown Truckee Photo

After shooting some friends signing and performing at the Cottonwood Restaurant a couple days ago (post with those photos), I took a walk in Downtown Truckee for some snowy photo fun. We were finally getting a decent snowstorm. It's been a slow year for the snow, there is usually a lot more of it by this time of year.

Mix the nighttime snow with the Christmas lights, and streetlight... and you get a very photogenic scene! There was a homeless guy walking around the area, looking like he was out of his mind and acting strange, so I had to work fast. Just a few quick photos and then I left. I didn't like the way he was looking at me and my somewhat expensive camera. I'll be back for more photos when we get more snow soon. For now, I am happy with this shot!

Shot with a Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens, set at 45mm. The ISO was 2000, the lens aperture was f/4.0, and it was a 1/80 of a second long exposure. Shot handheld with lens image stabilization on. Longer exposures do not work well with scenes like this. If it were a long exposure on a tripod, the snow would look like long white lines instead of little white spots. With a very long exposure, you might not event see the snow at all.

Fingers crossed that I'll be back to this scene soon. We are supposed to get more snow today, but so far it's only been rain. Bring on the colder temps!

Thank you for looking and I hope you are all having a great day.

Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com

Cottonwood Open Mic Night

I had a ton of fun last night, listening to and photographing local musicians at the Tahoe Truckee School of Music open mic night. It happens every Thursday evening at the popular Cottonwood Restaurant, here in Truckee, California. Many of these musicians that I photographed are instructors at the school. My son @enak actually grew up taking piano and signing lessons there. It was great to have daily performances in our house as he practiced, I miss those days...

The music was sounding great and the food at the restaurant is always top-notch! Here are a few photos of some of the musicians. All shot with a Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens. All handheld photos with varying settings but all of them had very high ISOs. They also all had Photoshops AI noise reduction applied to them when editing. Yes, the photos almost look a bit cartoony and surreal when you open them up and look at them on a big computer monitor. But before the noise reduction, they were VERY noisy with and were not usable. The AI noise reduction does an incredible job at making the photos look clean and making them usable. I'm a fan of this fairly new Photoshop technology!

Thank you for looking and I hope you are all having a fun and wonderful day!

Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com