Winter Storm (of Creativity?)
In late January, the eastern United States was hit by a winter storm and some states are still afflicted with road closures and power outages, as of the date of posting. Many of those locations are in the south, which isn’t equipped to handle those type of weather events as well as northern states. Those issues have affected hospitals, K–12 schools, institutions of higher learning, and a variety of other places from operating as usual, or even being open all together. Fortunately, my location wasn’t impacted as much as was forecasted leading up to the storm. I still have bad memories of 2021 when the temperature dropped into the teens (ºF) for severals days. It snowed and everything iced over, we lost water due to the pipes freezing, and all the trees in my backyard ultimately died from the cold. The recent storm brought sleet, freezing rain, and a faint dusting of snow leaving about 1–2 inches of ice on everything, but the power remained on and no pipes froze. Thankfully, it was not a repeat of 2021. I pray that power and water can be restored in the affected areas quickly and also for the safety of everyone involved, from those forced to live in the current conditions to those working around the clock to remedy the situation.
It’s been difficult for me to not feel guilty when others were—and still are—going through much tougher times than myself as I was able to go outside (albeit it was quite cold) to document and photograph the aftermath of the ice storm. However, I do think photography can bring out the beauty in the adverse, even if it is hard to see sometimes. Wanting to explore that more, I took advantage of what had been given and make some pictures. Let’s get into it!
Snowflakes [Macro Photography]
Macro photography is hard! It’s hard when the temperatures are pleasant but factor in below freezing temperatures and it is even more difficult. I didn’t do myself any favors attempting macro photography of snowflakes by deciding to go handheld (without a tripod) in the extreme cold.
For those reading this that may not be familiar with macro photography you can think of it as “making the small, big” using high levels of magnification and being closer to the subject. Macro photography is a type of close-up photography but not all close-up photography is truly macro photography. Generally, to be considered true macro photography, the subject being photographed must be have a 1:1 subject to camera sensor (or film) magnification. Imagine that you were to pick up whatever you are attempting to photograph and pressed it directly on to the film or camera sensor. That is how big it must show up in the photograph to be considered true 1:1 macro. Hopefully that visual makes sense and helps you understand.
When photographing snowflakes, I had to channel my inner Don Komarechka[1]. I have a lot to learn and improve upon before ever coming close to reaching his level, but I’m quite pleased with what I was able to get. With macro photography there are times that multiple photos have to be combined through focus stacking because the entire subject cannot all be in focus. That was the case with two of the three snowflake photos shown here. As I mentioned earlier I was not using a tripod to create these images, therefore, the vast majority of captured frames are miserably out of focus. Merely breathing in and out can lead to photos being out of focus as the lens moves back and forth compared to a static snowflake. The depth of field is already extremely shallow, more so than normal with my 90 mm macro lens because I also added three extension tubes to obtain closer focus, which caused even less to be in focus. This also allowed me to reach greater than a 1:1 magnification ratio. Out of 504 total frames taken only 15 of those led to the production of the three versions included here. It was opportune that the snowflakes had landed on a darkly tinted window, which helped with the overall processing of the final images.
Have you ever attempted to photograph snowflakes? How did your experience compare to mine?
Encapsulated in Ice [Subject Isolation]
Another set of subjects I explored included objects encased in ice. Finding these subjects was not a problem after the freeze, but isolating those subjects proved to be a bigger challenge. A composition can quickly descend into chaos if a subject is not properly chosen. Of course this directly depends on the scene as a whole. What worked best for my photographs that day was to completely isolate the object against a clean, uncluttered background. As much as a I tried, I couldn’t make any compositions including leaves work. The most common subjects I found were sticks and limbs covered in ice, but my favorite compositions included icy buds along the fence line.
Patterns and Abstracts
Finding patterns and making abstract photos often involves filling the frame with shapes or repeating elements. Locating a pattern and determining if it can be translated into an abstract photograph isn’t always a straightforward task. The compositions I found included an icy window of a vehicle with varying amounts of snow, a rocky driveway through ice, and snow-covered ice.
Icy windows (two compositional approaches): Included here in this set are two different takes on photographing an icy vehicle window. The first was to fill the frame with the ice-covered glass to show the gradual transition of the darker tones at the bottom of the image into the highlights at the top. There are areas in the images that the glass of the window is actually visible through the ice, but without knowing that you may spend quite some time trying to determine what those areas actually were. The light really does bring out the textural contrast between the flat, tinted glass and the repeated bumpy pattern of the ice on the window. In addition to the tonal and textural contrast, there are snowflakes all over the image (click the image to go into Lightbox mode for easier viewing). Inspecting the image for each snowflake allows you to really see each solitary snowflake.
In the second image, which is against a different icy window, I chose to move closer and fill half of the frame with the snow that had gathered at the bottom of the window. This particular abstract scene drew me in because of the transition that occurs moving upward through the image. The gathered snow is more prominent at the bottom and thins out before reaching the dark, ice-covered window. There’s textural, tonal, and color contrast all working together simultaneously to form this abstract photograph. It reminds me of an aerial view of waves in the water and is my favorite in the set.
Rocky driveway viewed through the ice (randomized and repeating patterns): Finding repeating or randomized patterns, as seen in the third image, is another way of adding visual interest. The rocks under the ice are both randomly spaced and sized; however, the ice crystals forming on top take on a more regular pattern. The slightly obscured rocks seen through the translucent ice brings an additional element to the image and keeps the viewer exploring the image, especially while attempting to pick out the varied colors of the rocks through the ice. The color contrast of the rocks and works well in this image, in my opinion.
Snow-covered ice (low contrast and uniformity): The visual constancy of the ground covered in snow is what piqued my interest for the final image in this series. The only thing breaking up the snow-covered driveway are the darker portions of the snow in shadow. It was overcast at the time of making the image so the contrast of the image is also quite low. Shadows are only there because there were small recesses that had not collected as much snow and received less light than the part where the snow is more elevated.
Create in the Moment You Feel Creative
It’s important to take advantage of an opportunity to create when it presents itself. Produce something even if you’ll be the only person that sees it. Making excuses, procrastinating, and overthinking can stifle that creative feeling. I tend to overthink and am quite familiar with procrastination! In those instances, the desire to create fades quickly. This time around I decided to create when the feeling hit. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent out in the ice and snow making photographs—even if I did have to run my fingers under warm water after staying out too long in the cold without proper protection against the weather. My hope is that you enjoyed reading about it and viewing the photos I captured that day. I also hope you are able to go out and be creative soon!
How do you react when the creative feeling strikes? Let me know!
Take care of yourselves and I wish you the best on your next photography adventure!
Notes:
[1] See Don Komarechka’s snowflake images at https://www.donkom.ca/
