Mother Nature's Artwork

People often ask me why I like winter so much and I think it dawned on me while browsing through my photos of this past week.

It is the amazing things that happen during the winter that make me love it so much.

Like the ice storm of the night of the 10th.  The photo above is from that storm.  Such beautiful shapes and stark contrasts!  I could have spent the whole day just photographing a 80 foot stretch of the woods on the ridgetop.

Daylight and time didn't allow for that though.

Last week it was the creek that offered fantastic ice abstracts above the flowing water.  How can you not just love that?

Of course you have to wear the proper clothing to stay warm.  I have a new favorite hat.  It is a 'mad bomber' hat with rabbit fur lining.
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Plus, I should probably mention that today's modern cameras don't like changing from cold to warm.  Condensation will form on the camera and ruin the electronics if you don't handle it properly.
I carry gallon ziplock bags in my padded insulated case.  Before I come in, I put the cameras in each their own ziplock bag and zip it.  I put the cameras in the bag and then set the back in a cooler part of the house for an hour or so.
I have to use utter patience to not rip open the bag and grab out the memory cards to see what and how my shots turned out.
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The above shot is from the morning of the 10th.  We'd had a rapid warm up from the below zero temps to something like 25.  This created a dense fog which deposited a beautiful hoar frost on grasses, twigs, trees and the like.

The frost is very hard to photograph properly, the auto focus...yes this ladies old eyes depend on it, seems to have a hard time detecting the frost.  Or maybe it is the camera operator!

This is for you Grand daughter Ariel.
See what fun you can have with your camera?

I think you'd even find taking different types of shots of your pine trees fun and interesting!

Here are a few more shots from my short outing on the 11th.

Same branch as the first but different view.

This morning on our Frosty Walk, my neighbor and I enjoyed the daylight gradually coming over the landscape.  

I found it amazing that there was still a lot of ice on the trees.  But a wind is blowing now and the forecaster said we'd get to 38* today.

I plan and dusting off the snow shoes and heading down the valley with Dixie and Morris.
You all have a great Sunday too.