It’s embarrassing, really

We had countless warnings of an impending snowstorm here last night, though they admitted it wasn’t going to ‘stick,’ as they say up north; basically, this means that the air temperature is cold enough to produce snow, but the ground temperature remains too warm for accumulation, melting it off quickly. It started out as rain, but in the wee hours of the morning it turned to thick and heavy snow. I shot a couple of video clips just to illustrate the amount coming down.


Sometime close to 5 AM, once it had stopped snowing, I trotted out with the camera just to fire off a few frames before it all disappeared. This was a wise move, because even as I type this the snow is vanishing, and while out there (about two hours previous,) it was dripping from the trees almost as if it was raining out.

light overnight snowstorm
In New York this would be laughed at, sufficient to make the ground muddy but not affecting driving or even walking the dog. It serves only as proof that we got at least one example of snow for 2021; it remains to be seen if this will be the only one.

another view of not-snow
Both of these were time exposures by available light, but the first was with Auto White Balance and the second with Sunlight, capturing the hue of the streetlights bouncing from low cloud cover. I was having a hard time finding anything with enough snow to become even a little fartistic. But while out there next to the neighborhood pond, I spotted a brief glow from the clouds, and on returning home the full moon appeared almost clearly, though I was shooting our rosemary bushes at the time. Once I’d finished that and changed lenses, raising the tripod up to working level and framing some gumballs, fast-moving clouds almost obscured the moon again, and I let the exposure go much longer than originally intended hoping to get it clearly through a gap in the clouds. This was not to be, and most of what I got was the glow from the clouds as they revealed the moon in portions.

gumballs against moon glow
All focusing, by the way, was manual, sometimes with the help of the headlamp, but this one is admittedly a little off. Oh well.

My last attempt at anything decent was with a mobile sculpture in the front garden, and this is two stacked frames, combining the light from the streetlight and my headlamp for more balanced illumination.

mobile sculpture with smattering of accumulated snow
That’s about it, really. Once again, I tried to get something to photograph, but even as loose as my standards are, this isn’t cutting it. We need either a more serious snowstorm or an early spring – I’m good with either one right now.

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