… I went out to get some pics.
The snow started in a very lackluster manner, just dusting the colder surfaces, and kept that up for hours, but by 11 PM it was getting more serious, and a little after midnight I went out to capture some night exposures. It was quite bright out there, from the low cloud cover reflecting the lights of the town to the streetlight on the opposite side of the house, and of course the snow adding to that. The only thing I didn’t do was fire off the flash to freeze the snowflakes in air, because it was still coming down fairly heavily. But quietly; no wind, no noise at all (because even the roads are empty,) so the only sounds were of my feet squelching in the snow and the rustle of the camera cover as I made adjustments. Oh, and some curses when I fumbled and dropped my RC-1 infrared remote control in the snow. Whaddya want? It’s about half the size of a cigarette lighter and I had gloves on. I found it easily enough, and it’s working fine.
Both of these are of the pond right out back, this one not quite ninety degrees to the right of the previous, same tripod position. I counted off 45 seconds for both, but that’s slightly off, 41 and 43 seconds, ISO 400, f8. No ducks of course, and in fact that hadn’t shown all day – just a heron, looking cold. The newly-installed bird feeders received a lot of attention, however, since the birds knew the weather was a-coming.
I also had to show you what the camera looked like once I came back inside.
I was prepared, using the rain cover (okay, not entirely prepared, since I don’t have a snow cover) and the deep lenshood, intended for exactly these kind of uses. You can still see a little snow inside the lenshood from when I turned the camera sideways for vertical compositions, the hood not being quite adequate for that. Had I turned it to compensate, the edges of it would have gotten into the frame, so I kept my time with the camera sideways as short as possible.
More images will likely be along come daybreak, when I can see better to frame more fartistically, and when I might convince some critters to hold still long enough. Sit tight.