Earlier this week, I decided that winter was over and that I was going to get out with the camera no matter what, even if for short periods of time and even when the conditions weren’t quite right. It proved to be a good weekend to make that decision.
Last I had looked on Thursday morning, we were forecasted to receive approximately 4 inches of snow Friday evening into Saturday morning, but when I awoke, six inches of snow had already fallen and the radar indicated that there was more on the way. I got dressed, grabbed my camera gear, cleaned off the car, and proceeded to Green Lakes.
The roads were slick, but I found my way to the park nonetheless, only to find that none of the lot was yet plowed. Preferring to not have to dig my car out after getting plowed in or to inconvenience the plow operators, I turned around and returned to Chittenango. I chose to park in the municipal lot near the village police station (which I know to be the first place in town that is plowed by the DPW), and I proceeded to walk along the creek and through town.
When I left the house, I had all intentions of using a variety of lenses, but the snow was falling fast, I didn’t want to swap lenses, and I didn’t want to expose the 75-300 to so much wetness, so I chose to put on th 12-45 and leave everything else in the car. Besides, the conditions were such that I was going to get a portfolio worthy with a long lens on this date. This was a day to walk around and practice composition, nothing more.
As I approached the creek, there were a few scenes that caught my, and I did the best that I could with them in the moment. These included a light overlooking a trash bin and 3 electric meters, a butterfly ornament with snow on it, and a poor solo killdeer who seemed to be regretting its life decisions.
As I progressed south along the creek, I would proceed to capture images of subjects that looked interesting in shape, contrast, or subject.
My favorite images was probably this composition in the creek. This particular treatment is a bit too overdone, I think, but I definitely want the water to have a lot of contrast from near black to near white. This version probably has a bit too much clarity/structure in the water, though.
As I walked through town, there wasn’t much else to photograph. I tried to play with composition of varying things that caught my eye from abstraction to irony, but it all falls flat. Still, not a bad exercise.
By the time I returned to my car, TKD had been cancelled, and I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to the house, so I drove to Sullivan Park to see if there was anything to photograph there. The snow continued to fall, so the 75-300 continued to remain in my car as I walked the pond.
There wasn’t much to see at the park, either. I like the minimalistic image of the swing with snow in it best, but it wasn’t anything to write home about, either.
While I was walking the pond, I noted 3 pairs of birds. I saw a couple mallards and a couple of canadian geese, standard fare for the area. I also saw what I think were a couple Hooded Merganser, but (unlike the larger birds) they took flight before I could get near enough to see (the others just swam to the middle of the pond).
The next morning, I decided I would return to the pond with the longer lens to see if the ducks had returned. Before I departed I walked the street to see if there were any birds in the trees that were eager to be photographed, but there were only a couple of starlings. I was hoping for a killdeer or robin in the snow, but it wasn’t meant to be on this particular morning, so I got into the car and made my way to Sullivan Park to find … no unique birds.
The same couple of geese (with a 3rd) and mallards were still there, so I patiently waited for a few opportunities to present either with composition or action and pressed the shutter for what were 2 decent captures. In the case of the male mallard, I was only framing it because it was dipping under and out of the water and as I was bringing the camera up (and before I could adjust my settings), it started flapping its wings, so I captured what I could in the moment. I don’t necessarily mind the movement, but I do wish that I had another image with a faster shutter speed to compare it to.
Both images received a high-key treatment to eliminate distracting elements in the foreground and background.
There was also one cool phenomenon that I noticed while I was there. There was a crazy frost that had developed on grasses that were growing in the little feeder ditch from the marsh to the pond. I tried to get a good composition one it, but it was difficult to figure out the best scale and framing. I hindsight, it probably would have been well served by a diptych or triptych to show what was happening on a large, medium, and small/macro scale, but I just went with the medium to try to compose something that looked interesting in a single frame, but still offered enough detail to see what was happening.
I would return home for the morning to post-process the images I had captured before bringing the camera along to my parents house to capture the memories to be created sledding on the hill.
Overall, I would do an okay job, but I missed a few moments during which time I wished that I had my camera at my eye. I missed Austin tumbling off the tube, and I missed my father falling face first in the snow after trying to run down the hill. To be fair, I didn’t even see latter with my own eyes, but there was a lot of laughter and I wish I had seen it (and captured it too, for that matter). But still, there are 80+ quality images that will easily spark our memories in the distant future, and that is the point of it all.