We did not escape the clutches of the storm that passed across the country, though it did arrive a bit later than anticipated; I had the IP camera set up to run a time-lapse overnight, which captured nothing but rain. Instead, it turned to snow around 9 AM and continued all through daylight hours, which is a good amount for any location, but what we call “slammed” in NC. Thankfully, the pond is within easy trudging distance, so I was still able to get some pics without contemplating any driving.
The biggest challenge was keeping the equipment dry; it was a sub-freezing equivalent of a downpour. I wouldn’t call it a ‘blizzard’ myself, having grown up in central NY and seeing what that really means, plus there was no wind at all. But the snow accumulated in seconds, literally, and I had to keep drying off the camera and lenses.
The Canada geese (Grus canadensis) seemed to be bearing up stoically under their shawls of snow – not very active and not looking happy, but coping. Shooting across the pond with the 100-300 L, the density of the falling snow can be seen easily.
The pond, almost rid of the ice a few days before, was gradually starting to freeze over, the snow becoming slush on the surface, which the waterfowl were cutting paths through, little channels of open water that they followed mostly single-file. During my animal rescue days, I’d gone out a couple of times to free domestic geese that didn’t have sense enough not to roost on the ice, thawing a small patch before it refroze and pinned their feathers, and thus them, to the ice surface; the wild geese apparently know not to do this, but I can’t look at them sitting in the middle of the thickening slush and feel comfortable with it.
The funny thing was, with the air as still as it was and the temperature sitting just below freezing, it wasn’t half as uncomfortable as some of the days in the past couple of weeks, though you did have to be wary of snow dropping from branches down the back of your neck, and I was in a constant battle to keep it out of the camera bags. The Girlfriend and The Sprog accompanied me out there, so I can present an exciting action shot of yours truly, which at least shows off the snow piling onto my chapeau – I’m glad I had the foresight to double up with the broad brim hat and not just use the wool cap.
But, admittedly, it was a losing battle, and before too long I called it quits solely because the camera equipment was getting too wet and I was afraid of moisture seeping into the electronics. We headed back and I quickly dried off the stuff and put it in front of a fan to help evaporate anything else away, letting the bags dry thoroughly as well. But I did have the chance to revisit an earlier shot and do something a little more along the lines that I’d envisioned. A bit brighter light would have been nice, but that wasn’t going to happen today. So it goes.
Maybe, if I get my shit together, I’ll be back with some macro snowflake images. We’ll see how it goes.