Snow Shadows

One benefit of a snow fall is it gives me a pure white surface to capture snow shadows.  These are made by the Rose of Sharon tree by the potting shed.  How crisp and clear they are near the tree and how soft and blurred they become as the get farther away.  The farther an object is from the surface it's casting a shadow on, the more photons can come in from another angle and make the edge fuzzy.  The center of the shadow, with a sharp edge, is the umbra, the fuzzy edge of the shadow is the penumbra.  Sorry for this early morning science lesson but last night I watched the amazing new documentary by Ken Burns on Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian genius who studied, amongst so much more, the effects of light and shadow. I learned so much.  If you haven't seen it, do try to.  It is a brilliant film.  "When you stop learning, you start dying."