January 2013

Oh geez, it's February! Somehow the whole month of January has slipped by, and we've spent so long going through the Oaxaca photos I never got around to showing you how beautiful the winter has been here in Maine. Those of you who know me on Facebook have seen a couple of snowy photos, but let's have a quick catch-up so we'll be ready for the new month.

SNOWFALL

On January 16,  big fluffy snowflakes began falling at 8am. I've been wanting to try taking photos of falling snow, inspired by this article, so I headed out to the Jesup Path.

I ran into technical difficulties pretty quickly. The snow got increasingly wet, and the edge of my hood developed a slow drip. My gloves were damp and flakes melted as soon as they touched my coat. My camera will take a fair amount of wet weather, but I noticed droplets forming on the barrel of the zoom and decided to put it in its Rain Sleeve, which instantly fogged up, making it impossible to read the camera settings. Still, a fogged plastic bag is better than sucking water into the lens, so I muddled on. I had brought a microfiber cloth to dry my lens when it got droplets on it, but it never occurred to me that the cloth itself would get wet between my pocket and the camera lens! On the bright side, it turns out that small streaks on the lens don't necessarily ruin a photo.

SEAGULLS

 On the 19th, I slid down to the Bar after a morning snowfall to stalk the seagulls.

The whole flock was lined up on the tiniest sliver of mud, watching the tide inch closer and closer to their toes.

FROST

Toward the end of the month we had a spell of bitterly cold weather. When it dropped below 0ºF, my studio windows sprouted psychedelic frost patterns.

 

When I wake up and see the thermometer at -8ºF, I whoop and run around the house checking windows for cool frost patterns. 

If I weren't a photographer, I'd probably swear and go back to bed.