Faerie Glade in Snow

The snow had not begun yet when we awoke on Wednesday morning, but all of the local schools and many other things had already cancelled. The armies of tiny little flurries arrived around 8:45 a.m., and then those armies grew and multiplied; it snowed solidly for enough hours to give us a couple of new inches of white stuff.

It appears that I, like Thoreau, have become self-appointed inspector of snowstorms! The trick, for me, now that time is at my disposal, is to figure out WHEN during the storm is the best time to go out for pictures. Do you go when it's just started? Do you wait a while? Do you try to hold out till it ends?

My experience with photographing snowstorms is that they are ephemeral things. You want some snow actually ON the trees for your shots. Snow coming down fast has its own appeal. If you wait till it's done snowing, you'll miss the snow action shots that can be very exciting to capture, if challenging to photograph. Wind can whisk the snow OFF the trees and thus take away the lovely fresh appeal of your newly fallen snow. So can rain or sleet or ice, which weigh it down, flatten its fluff.

So I gave the snowstorm about two hours to put some good white stuff out there. And then I saw on the weather radar map online that there would eventually be either rain or sleet or ice coming, which would mean pretty much the death of my lovely fluffy new snow photo shoot. So I grabbed my pink umbrella and my camera and my tunes box and out I went into the storm!

I had decided I was heading for my favorite pond in the Scotia Barrens, as I am eternally loving on it and photographing it. Since it was snowing so heavily at the time, I had to put my camera bag in between my layers to protect it. The temps were in the 30s somewhere. I had on a sweatshirt and hiking pants and hiking boots and gloves.

Over that, I put on a black Woolrich polar fleece zippered, hooded jacket (I bought two of those many years ago, one for my big sister Barb and one for me; now I wear hers, which has a hole in it, every day, as a way of being with and remembering her), and on top of that a red fleece vest with big pockets.

In between those layers, I slung my camera bag on my left shoulder and tucked it in under the red vest, to keep it out of the snow. As I walked out the door, I clipped my iPod shuffle to my camera's shoulder strap, put my pink umbrella up.

When I arrived at the Barrens pond, there is a spot right by it that is covered by an overhang of evergreens, so it's a bit protected there, and sometimes the ground is even dry. That's where I finally got my camera out for the first time, as I knew there was a risk of getting snow on the lens immediately and that might end my photo shoot, or screw it up pretty good.

My camera battery warning light began flashing at about this inopportune moment, which sucked pretty bad. Because there was no way, NO WAY AT ALL, that I was opening up my camera to put a new battery in it, amid all this snow!

The assorted batteries I have (the NB10L) are variable. With some, you have a BUNCH of pictures left when it starts flashing. Others, not so much. And once the battery starts to flash, the super-zoom sometimes begins to falter. And for my snow action scenes, I often pick a spot in the woods and super-zoom into it to REALLY capture the flying snow! Battery roulette time. Which one did I have now? Clint Eastwood in my head: Do you feel lucky, punk? DO YOU?

Let's talk logistics now. My left hand is for managing the umbrella. My right hand is for both holding the camera and snapping the shutter button. In cold weather, I typically keep the gloves on as much as possible (and I recommend a pair of thin, colorful gloves: thin so you can handle the camera controls; colorful so you can find the gloves if you drop them).

But on this day, I ended up with my left glove on and my right glove in my vest pocket. As the snow swirled around and came and went from different directions, I kept moving, strategically placing my umbrella BETWEEN me and the snowy wind, to keep the snow off the lens.

Above is one of the shots I got not far from my pond. There was a little evergreen tree just sitting there, looking like a baby, and I sort of imagined it was being sheltered by the larger trees in this lovely and peaceful faerie glade that is our Scotia Barrens. When I imported the photos later, I applied a "dramatic cool" filter in Photos on my Mac to give it a slightly moody blue tinge.

The camera battery held out, I didn't get snow on the lens until further down the hill when I took some street shots, and I just quietly kept on snapping, then tucked the camera in its bag. If there is wet ON the camera itself, I typically wipe it off, gently. If it's on the lens, I let it be. No scraping or scratching or wiping the lens on scene, unless conditions are adequate, which they were NOT. Tucked the camera back in the bag, walked home.

So the snow was pretty, and the battery lasted. And I got a bunch of fun snow pictures, which I am always trying to improve on. And when I got home, there was my husband in the kitchen going mano a mano with the lovely roast. Which was followed later by probably 90 minutes or more of shoveling, but hey, that's part of the package; and then the weary shovelers were rewarded with freshly made cinnamon rolls. I hope you enjoyed the snow scene and my remarks about how I take/make such photos.

One of the truths of my own life is that I need to go outdoors and experience woods time almost every day to be happy. I go to the woods for exercise, and for beauty, and for peace, and because I find all kinds of items of interest there to learn about. My camera is an instrument of natural history investigation, always has been. Here is a cool thing; let's take a picture, look it up when we get home.

But I go for deeper reasons, too. I go to wild places because they feed my soul. In wildness is the preservation of the ME. I hope this wild blue faerie glade has given you just a tiny bite of something wild and good and tasty for YOUR soul, today, too. There's my photo. Here's my story. And my song is this one: Tracy Chapman, with All That You Have Is Your Soul.