Snowy rhododendrons

It was cloudy and just nudging the freezing mark, so yesterday's unexpected snow stayed in place. Since it was dry, that gave me a chance to get outside, my stalwart dSLR in hand, to do some "serious" photography. To be sure, even with less-than-pro-level equipment, which, alas, pretty well describes everything in my imaging toolkit, I'm always quite serious about capturing photos, but I usually feel more in control when I'm out with the dSLR than with a point-and-shoot. This rhododendron, its leaves still weighed down with snow but the coming year's buds free of their white burden, falls in the "more serious" camp. I knew exactly what I wanted the photo to look like and the camera gave me that capability; with a point-and-shoot, there's more guess-work involved. Sometimes, the latter situation is just fine, and you get images that are better than what you had in mind. I love serendipity, but I'm also a big fan of a certain species of control. Well, photographic control.