Monday, January 17, 2022
Guilt plays with a man’s mind in funny ways. You might remember that I had all intentions of going out on a trek if the snow fell as expected overnight on Saturday. Well, the forecasted snow kept getting pushed back, but it did start at some point over night. By the time I woke up shortly after sunrise on Sunday I could see the blanket of snow on the ground, and it was coming down very hard. I could still see the tips of the grass poking through the snow since the grass started growing again during the month of December when we were experiencing 80-degree days. I had no doubt that this was going to be a significant snowfall and I got dressed to go out trekking. To make a long story short, I spent the day looking out the window and seeing the blizzard conditions with the howling winds, replaced by sideways sleet, and ultimately a heavy snow shower. None of the above would be beneficial to photography because I really hate to continuously wipe my lens from precipitation that falls on it. Plus, I wasn’t looking forward to going out and driving in the mess. I hadn’t seen a single car going down our road during the time I was looking outside.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems driving in the snow, and have a vehicle perfectly suited for such a task. The issue is I spent 20 years of my life having to drive in whatever weather happened to fall on a workday. I didn’t have snow days as a police officer, I just had days with snow chains and painfully slow response times. I had to deal with the wrecks, all while avoiding being involved in one myself. After 20 years of that, I don’t take for granted the fact that I don’t have to drive in any conditions that I don’t want to. It makes it rather difficult this time of year though because I do like snowy pictures, and they don’t happen for me all that often. I just hate to get in the truck and go driving around looking for scenes to photograph. It doesn’t help matters that I haven’t sold a print in a while now. I look at it like this. I actually stand a better chance of sliding off the road into a ditch than selling a print of any photograph that I capture. That makes the decision to go out that much rougher in my mind.
I ended up opting to stay home all day on Sunday and just watch the snow from my recliner for a large portion of the day. The early part of the morning was spent putting the last few slides together for my upcoming workshop with the Wilkes Art Gallery where I try to take the mystery out of exposure. It was time well spent and I’m glad to have the majority of that preparation behind me. I really didn’t feel bad about staying at home because I would have had a time getting good images with the snow and sleet that was continuously falling. There was also the matter of the completely overcast sky which offered no texture at all, and very flat light across the landscape. I told myself that I might try on Monday, knowing that I probably wouldn’t.
Between 7-9pm I found myself watching Toni coming home from work in Winston on an app that we use to track each other. Seeing her drive the 60 some miles home, in the dark, kind of put me in my place in a way. There was just something off about her driving in it while I sat at home comfortably. When she got home, I met her at the bottom of our driveway because it is steep and was quite slick from the winter weather. She had already mentioned that she might park at the bottom of the driveway, so I wanted to be down there to help her carry her stuff in, or possibly drive the car up the hill if she couldn’t. When she pulled in, she just kept going and got about halfway up the driveway before starting to spin. This was actually quite impressive since she is driving a Subaru with all-wheel drive. She wanted to just leave it there and walk the rest of the way up. I wanted to give it a try, so I hopped in the driver’s seat and backed it down the driveway. Starting off in 2nd gear and working the momentum, I was able to get it up the driveway, but diverted to the lower parking area because I wasn’t going to be able to steer it precisely enough to get it in the garage. I had made it, and I was happy that it was out of the driveway.
When Monday rolled around, she had a quick errand to do in North Wilkesboro and knowing that the roads were going to be as bad or worse than when she came home, I told her I would drive her. We loaded up in the 4Runner and I grabbed my camera. It was a little tricky getting down the steep driveway, but we got out and made our way into North Wilkesboro. The sky was looking good, and I was starting to get a little energized about doing some photography, but I was going to have to find something to put in front of the camera. When we were done with her errand, I ran her back home and dropped her off. I headed back out to see what I could put under the interesting clouds.
My first thought was a barn on 18 that I had photographed before in the Fall but have been trying to get something a bit different since then. The snow was going to offer a much different look than what I had before. The barn was also next to an old house that I had shot shortly after the barn. I was hoping for a two for one special at that location because I was going to be able to park at the gas station across the street while I was shooting them. Well, when I got there, I looked at the scene and found that the snow actually didn’t simplify the scene as I was hoping for. It just drew more attention to the commercial building in the background of the barn. The sky also wasn’t all that great in that direction either. I drove just a little further and looked at the old house. It didn’t really look much different than when I had photographed it before, and the snow didn’t do a thing for it. Well, that was great, my first two ideas were thrown out and I hadn’t even stepped out of the truck yet.
I started to think what else I could work with in these conditions and almost as if reading the script from the last time I wanted to photograph this barn, I considered a barn that is quickly becoming one of my favorites a short distance up the road. I had actually photographed this barn recently for the second time. The sky was looking good in that direction, and I already knew the compositions that I would be able to work with it. I was hoping that the snow was going to be undisturbed since the property is vacant as far as I know. When I arrived, I pulled off the road on what I knew was a driveway. I couldn’t actually see it, but I could see the ditches on either side and knew that this was a place I could park.
I got out and grabbed the camera. From experience, I knew that the lens of choice would be my standard 24-70mm along with a polarizer to give a little extra definition to the sky. I made a conscious effort to walk wide away from the barn and start from a distance with the compositions. The last thing I wanted to do was to ruin the virgin snow surrounding the barn. I worked my compositions from far away and gradually worked closer. I shot everything from 70mm down to 24mm to make sure that I had the right perspective of the barn and the tree to the side. I ended up with this shot from 38mm that seemed to fit all of the elements into the scene quite nicely. While I was shooting the different distances, I would wait for the sun to pop out and light up the barn which made the sky overhead look that much more ominous which was what I wanted. I had to pay particular attention to the exposure since I needed detail in the very faded barn quilt. It was the brightest part of the scene thanks to the sun shining on it, so I based my entire exposure on that quilt block. It worked out well, because when I got the image home and started to work it, I was able to recover the colors of the quilt even better than they were able to be seen in person. I normally wouldn’t go to this extent to recover details on a faded piece, but I just can’t have a bright white block on the front of the barn with nothing in it. I did find it funny though, that the two halves of the quilt block have faded at different rates with the left side being nearly invisible. I suspect that I won’t be photographing this barn many more times because that quilt is just about gone, and it will become a distraction once it loses the colors within the block.
I was happy that I had my first image in the bag at this point and decided that I wanted to try the other angle that I had tried before with no success. I was hoping that with the snow that it would work better. I walked very wide over to the other side of the barn and started to frame up compositions. As always, it looked really good in the camera, and I was feeling like this was going to be the time that I was able to make this idea work. The sky was looking good, but I was missing the sun which had dipped behind a very large cloud that gave very little hope of magic lighting any time in the near future. I just kept shooting it as a moody scene happy that the quilt block was going to be easier to work with from this angle. Sadly, when I got the images home, none of these attempts made it into the keeper pile. They just lacked balance, and the visual pop that the first composition always brings to the game.
Not wanting to overstay my welcome, I loaded the camera back up in the truck and started back out on the road in search of another subject to photograph. I remembered another barn that one of my clients had told me about which wasn’t far from here. I found that road and started to slip and slide my way down the road. The side roads were terrible and solid sheets of ice, but I wasn’t having any issues with making it as long as I kept control of the momentum of the truck. When I got to the barn, I was really let down because the snow actually highlighted the houses in the background which I had never really seen before. There was not a good composition to be had on this one, so I just kept on going.
I made a few more turns down some very sketchy roads and eventually ended up on my way out to Traphill. If you will recall, I always have great luck out that way and decided to see what I could find to work with. There was an endless supply of great subject matter and I had photographed a great deal of it over the last year or so. I started to run different locations through my head and tried to decide how the snow would impact these different scenes. One of the ones that came to mind was a Galaxie that I had shot a little over a year ago when I was hunting rust. Even though the owner of the car really liked the photographs that I created that day, I was never really thrilled with them. The colors just didn’t really seem to go with the scene, and it was a bit confusing from a compositional standpoint. I was hoping that the snow might help the old car out because it really is a great subject and I wanted to do it justice.
I drove down the side roads that brought me to the car. These roads were basically tractor paths at this point because that was all that apparently had been traveling down here. I slowly made my way to the Impala while passing an old home that I had photographed about a year ago. I slowed to check it out, but just didn’t like the conditions for the house at all like this. I also passed the scene where the old Chevy truck was parked near a barn that I had shot on the same day as the Galaxie. I slowed to check that one out as well but didn’t see anything that tripped my trigger with it. The car was just a little way down the road, and I was hoping that I was going to have a different reaction when I saw it.
There was a different reaction when I arrived. The scene was much less cluttered with the snow which I liked. I also found out after looking at the old pictures of this car that either it has moved, or a tree was taken down in front of it. Either way, I had a mostly clear view of the front of the car which was a very important thing. The snow was helping it out, but I still wasn’t really excited about this car. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the snow was so deep on the car, or the fact that I was still subconsciously upset about the last attempt I made to photograph it. Whatever it was, I fought that negativity and pulled off on the side of the road to see what I could do.
I still had the camera built from the barn, so I just left it all put together the same way. I knew that this was going to require that same lens from the last time I worked it. As I had done with the barn, I walked well out of the composition and started shooting from further away than I really wanted to just to make sure that I had everything covered before I got in close. It was up close where I found my best compositions and I stuck with those much longer. I was having some issues with the wind blowing which made the weeds blur with motion. I played with the ISO until I was able to get a shutter speed that would freeze the motion. I also waited until the breeze let up before I hit the shutter release. I was racking up a huge frame count with this method of shooting, but I wanted to make sure that I had totally sharp images when I got home.
I was pretty happy with the compositions that I had been working on but felt that there might be something else to try as well. I knew that last time I had worked from the back of the car which turned out to be my favorite composition of the car that day, but I wasn’t feeling the rear of it this time. Looking back on the last time, I think that the reason that I liked the rear shot best was because of the tree that was positioned right at the bumper which obscured the front of the car. That tree wasn’t an issue this time, and I had full view of the front. Looking around, I could see that the most interesting part of the sky was across the road. It was early afternoon, but the clouds were doing some very interesting things. The sun was actually causing some very warm colors to develop in the sky, and I thought that I might be able to take advantage of those colors if I worked quickly. I moved to the other quarter of the car and started to work out a composition. Again, I started further away than I wanted to be and made my way closer. This time, I didn’t take the series of test shots just in case. I needed to work quickly in order to get the color in the sky which meant that I was just eyeballing it through the camera and changing the focal length of the lens as I approached. When I found the sweet spot, I plopped the tripod in the snow and started to fine tune things.
Oddly enough, I started out low as I had done earlier, but found that the car was protruding too far above the horizon line and blocking out some of the color. I elevated the tripod, and then extended the neck for maximum reach. That put the car well below the horizon and gave me a much better perspective on the car. I really liked the composition that I had here, and the sky was on fire. I’ve seen the colors kick off in the sky in the middle of the day a time or two, but this is a rare occurrence, and something that I love to be in a position to capture. I based the exposure on the highlight in the sky where the sun was trying to burn through the clouds. I had plenty of working exposure latitude for the camera, so I wasn’t worried about adding any grad filters or bracketing. I just made my shots when the breeze died down so that everything was tack sharp in the scene. The colors of the sky came through, even in the LCD image review so I knew that I was going to be able to really pull the colors out of the sky when I got the images home.
By the time I had finished this series, I was thinking that this was going to be my favorite image from the day. It had a strong composition, great light, and a dramatic sky to boot. The snow on the scene really helped to isolate the car, even if it was basically just the side of it. The red wheel was a nice bonus as it helped link the car to the sky above with the warm tones. The blues and greens on the metal balanced things out perfectly. I will say that I did a little extra work on the sky. The golden hues to the left are as they appeared, but the sky was much flatter appearing to my eyes. I did a few little tweaks in Lightroom to blend the tones of the sky a little better and give an overall more cohesive look to the image. It is still true to how I saw the scene and there hasn’t been any manipulation done, just a few tweaks of the hues in the sky is all. Not only was this one of my favorite images of the day, but Toni also actually liked this and the other composition that I shot of the Galaxie. When I can create an image of an old car that Toni likes I know I’ve done something special since she really doesn’t like this subject matter. I’m certainly not going to question it, that’s for sure!
When I got to the point that I felt I had enough frames of this car, I packed up my gear and started back down the road. With the interesting sky, I started to think about doing some landscapes. Since I was close to Stone Mountain, I figured I would make the drive up there and do a few things at the base of the mountain that I thought might be fun. The trip didn’t take but about 15 minutes, but I started to have some difficulties on the main road going in. There were several trees down leaving debris scattered along the road. It was also very packed ice with ruts from previous vehicles. It was slow going up the hill, but it was going to be worth it when I got there. I was really looking forward to working some landscapes in the snow, and I was already coming up with several compositions that I wanted to shoot.
Road Closed Ahead
That was what I saw before the gate to the park. Either the park wasn’t open due to the weather, or there was a downed tree blocking the way in. Not wanting to get in the middle of a cleanup operation, I got turned about and made my way back down the road through all of the debris. I wasn’t sure what I was going to work on next, but I knew that I wasn’t ready to call it quits just yet. When I got back out on the main road, I started to consider my options. I wanted to photograph something new which I hadn’t tried before. There were a few scenes out this way that I had considered, but never photographed before. I just needed to figure out what I wanted to try.
When I passed Absher Rd, I remembered several things there that I wanted to work on but hadn’t had the right conditions yet. As I was driving down the road, I was remembering a tip from a client of mine about a church up on a hill that was beautiful at sunrise. I had missed sunrise by six or seven hours at this point, but I remembered checking the church out and liking the styling of it with the stepped roof. I just had to remember where it was located on the road, and I would be able to give it a shot.
It wasn’t hard to find at all, and I pulled right into the parking lot to find a solid sheet of ice. The church was beautiful in its simplicity with the snow-covered roof sections matching the siding of the church perfectly. The sky was rather overcast, but there was a bit of detail that I was going to be able to pick out with the camera. It wasn’t as impressive as the sky I had seen above the Galaxie, but the bland sky oddly fit the scene quite well. I pictured this being a black and white image because of all of the hard lines of the church and the fact that the white building stood out from the trees in the background so well. I just wanted this to be a simple image and one that had a visual presence.
I still had the camera built with that standard lens and a polarizer and I figured that was going to be a perfect combination for this church. I mounted it all to the tripod and carefully worked out where I wanted to set the tripod up. I ended up getting in close to the church and using the wide-angle side of the lens. I loved the composition and committed to it. I shot a number of frames as the breeze changed intensity. I was having to deal with two wreathes on the front door with ribbons that were flapping in the wind, not to mention the trees swaying around in the background. Again, I had to boost the ISO to freeze the motion. I shot about 25 frames here and figured that I had what I wanted. As I was going back to the truck, I had to keep the camera pointed back towards the church because the flurries that were falling were blowing towards the church. I had left the lens cap in the trunk, so I had no protection for the filter. For simplicity, I just walked backwards which caused me to keep watching the church as I backed up. I was seeing some interesting perspective changes happening as I got further away. Normally, I like to start far off and work my way in to keep footprints down to a minimum, but I had been so sure that I wanted to have a wide-angle composition that I had just totally ignored the telephoto compositions. I actually found that I loved the look of the church at 70mm. By going with that focal range, I was able to avoid the converging verticals of the church, and I was also going to have less of the sky to worry with. That was a great thing because the most interesting part was right at the horizon and the wide-angle approach caused that to be very small in comparison. This way, I had a much better relationship between the foreground and the background.
I had pretty much exhausted my battery working up close, so I didn’t have much longer to go before I had to switch up batteries. I didn’t want to miss the light was doing at the moment, so I just pressed on and hoped that the battery would last. I got another 10 shots or so in-between the blasts of wind. The battery held, and I had a few more images to choose from when I got home. I was sure glad that I saw this composition before I called it a day because it was the one that simply won out between the two. The church just has so much more presence at this focal length, and the sky was more impressive. The overall composition was exactly the same. It was just those two slight differences that made this one so much better. This is why I try to really work a scene when I am there. It is rarely my first idea that works out the best.
I was satisfied with this location and after a quick batter change, I was packed back up and back on the road. I had two more places that I wanted to stop at before I got home. The first one, was close to the house and happened to be a scene that I had shot some time before. I had been happy with how that shot had turned out, but I felt that there was a better way to shoot the scene. I always felt that it needed to be brighter to overpower the large tree to the right of the house. The snow should definitely help me out there as it will brighten the roof and the yard. The sky was also opening up which was going to provide some extra light on the scene that I didn’t have the last time.
When I arrived, the property was untouched and that was just perfect in my eyes. The clouds were looking decent overhead which meant that I was probably going to be able to get something to work out here eventually. The camera was still built, so I just left it like it was because I knew that this was the lens that I needed for this location. Again, I started further away and began taking test shots as I went. I would evaluate the composition and make changes as needed. The biggest change that needed to be made was getting closer to the house. I worked my way in to what I felt was a little closer than I had been before and found the composition that I liked the best. I got things framed up and started making exposures. I quickly decided that I didn’t like the plain white snow in the foreground, and the blue sky above wasn’t doing anything for me either. The tree was still throwing things off balance because it was just so dark and everything else was very bright. I was about to quit on this location when the sun popped out from behind the clouds. There was a shadows broadcast across the yard in my foreground. That gave me the interest that I wanted there and provided a bit of depth to the scene.
I was onto something here, but the sky was lacking. I looked up and saw that there were some clouds working their way towards the house. I waited for them to get there. As they got closer, the sun went behind another set of clouds which killed my shadows in the foreground. I grabbed a few images with some cloud interest in the sky overhead, but nothing in the foreground. Honestly, I still wasn’t happy with the sky either, so I just stood there and waited a bit longer. It seemed that every time a big cloud would come close to the house, it would evaporate before it got into the airspace I needed it to occupy. There were clouds all around, but I couldn’t get any of them to move into the sky right above the house. All I was getting was small, puffy ones which didn’t really do anything for me.
The longer I waited, the more I expected somebody to come up and ask what I was doing. that didn’t happen, but I was starting to feel like I was standing out too much. I had been here about 20 minutes at this point and still hadn’t gotten the image that I wanted to get. Just as I was about to pack it up and hope that I had something that I could salvage, I saw a large cloud coming into the scene. It might actually make it to the patch of sky that I needed it to be in. I recommitted to waiting and when the clouds actually made it above the house, I started to shoot once again. I didn’t have that foreground interest but had come to the conclusion that I would do a composite image in Photoshop if needed because I had decided that was the look I wanted to have. Fortunately though, I didn’t have to do that because after the clouds appeared over the house, I saw the sun trying to break free of the clouds that it was behind. It was just a matter of minutes at this point. I’m glad I waited because I was finally able to get the conditions that I had been after here. I had the shadows in the foreground and the interesting sky over the house. All of that added visual interest really helped to offset the darkness of the tree. The sunlight, even helped to bring that out of the shadows and give it some nice color and texture.
I think it took me every bit of 30-40 minutes here before I got the conditions that I wanted but it was so worth the wait. There is just something so cozy about this little house and I have enjoyed photographing it both times. I do believe that I like this version the best out of the two though. If for nothing else, this one has more presence and appears to be bolder in the snow. It was a success and that was all I was after with this one. I was about frozen after standing out in the wind without shelter for that long. I was wanting to hit one more location, but the sun was actually too bright at this point for what I was wanting to get. I was getting tired, and the roads were starting to get worse. In fact, I had my first slip of the day coming up to the stoplight at 16 which is on a downhill section of the road. No matter what I did with the brakes, I couldn’t get the truck to stop from a whopping 12 mph in first gear. It was a slow slide with the ABS shuttering. I had to think about the traffic and make my plans for running the red light. Fortunately, there was nobody coming from either direction so if I had to run the light, I would be OK with it. As I got closer (yes, it was that kind of slow motion, and I was going maybe 3mph at this point), the back end started to come around to the right. I had no interest in sliding sideways down a hill, so I came off the brake, and turned into the slide which corrected it quickly. I then saw a bit of clear pavement before the stop bar, and I planted the front wheels on it before jabbing the brake. After about 10 seconds of sliding, I was stopped under the red light. I looked in the mirror to make sure that I wasn’t about to get plowed into and saw that there was nobody behind me either. The light turned green, and I decided to just go home and play it safe. I had driven 89 miles throughout Wilkes County, and roughly 60 of those miles had been in 4WD.
It was an eventful day for sure and I’m really glad that I went out to get some snow pictures. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed creating them. If any of them appeal to you, I would love the opportunity to match you up with your very own print. You can order stock sizes directly from this website, or you can contact me to discuss different sizes or media. Also keep in mind that I have three workshops which are scheduled through the Spring. There are spaces left in each one of them, so check them out and get signed up soon.
Until next time…
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