Mother nature's art.

As the weather warms up the snow melts off the roofs the water runs through the down spout on to the hedges below.  When I drove up the drive way this afternoon I saw that icicles had formed on a section close to the house.  I went inside and retrieved my Canon 7D and the 24-70mm lens.  After trying a few shots I realized I needed to get closer so I added a 36mm extension tube.

This allowed me to get in tight on the dripping icicle in an effort to freeze (pun intended) the water droplets as they came off.  With the ISO at 2000 I shot at 1/640 sec at f5.  Even at this speed there was some slight motion blur in the drops which I liked.  Timing was difficult and for the first time I actually did shoot a number of frames in secession. Here are three of my favourites where I thought the drops formed in an interesting way.

 This next image is the one I am posting for the Photo of the Day.  After doing the cropping and exposure changes in snapseed on the above image, I then began to play.  I had an idea what I was looking for and after scrolling through some of the settings in the vintage filter I settled on this one as the style as I loved the cool, blue tones that gave a more winter like feel.

 One of the off shoots from the dripping water was, of course, the icicles that formed below on the small branches.  I found them interesting as they were encased in ice.  As I looked this particular shape caught my eye so I moved in tight to it.  As I did I could see the figure of a large sea bird in the ice.  It was mother natures perfect ice sculpture.