Monday, February 2, 2026
I might be ready for Spring.
The older I get, the less I enjoy being out in the freezing cold, but here we are stuck in this weather pattern of frigid temperatures and lots of Winter weather that we normally don’t see. You may remember my last trek which was just about a week ago where I stopped to photograph a barn at sunrise after dropping Toni off at work. Since that time, the ice has almost been cleared from all of the roads, but we ended up with another heavy snowstorm this past Saturday. Depending on the area, somewhere between 5-14″ fell from the Piedmont to the foothills. We got just under 7″ at the house which was enough to create another day of shoveling the driveway. With the roads covered again, Toni and I stayed put at home on Sunday because we knew that she would be needing to go to work on Monday morning. That was going to be a day that I would be transporting her and might as well take the camera again since I just don’t get that many snow photos. There was no worry about the snow melting before Monday and since I was going to have to be out in it…well, you know the rest.
Looking at the weather, the sky was going to be clear with no clouds until the afternoon. It was going to be cold as well with lows in the mid teens around when I was going to be out just before sunrise. I wasn’t going to have much time to work because the sun was going to get pretty bright quickly and that was going to cause problems with the snow on the ground. I needed something that I could work quickly which would look good in the morning light. I knew that a barn was a good choice, and there was one by the house that I have been wanting to photograph for a while now. The last time I was considering it, the weather didn’t start to cooperate until afternoon and I knew that I was going to need morning light to make it look good. With the thicker snow, I wasn’t as interested in clouds as a cleaner sky would balance with the smooth ground better than the clouds that I had been wanting before. I would be getting back in the area of the barn at about sunrise if I dropped Toni off just before 7am. That would give me the time to really get the choice of light as the sun came up.
The only problem that I had with the barn was that I knew that there was only a single composition to be had here, and I remembered that parking was not all that easy. At least this time, there was snow on the ground which would give some traction for both me and the other cars on the road. There was much less chance of a car sliding off of the road into the truck with the current conditions. It seemed like I had a plan of action for the morning, and I was ready to make it happen when I woke up a little before 5am.
Toni and I got ready to head out to get her to work and to see what the road conditions were in actuality since all we had seen was about a half mile of our road. It didn’t take long driving to realize that the roads were a good bit worse than they had been the last time we went out. They were better than that early trip last week though which was good. Something that I did notice and wasn’t prepared for was the thermometer on the truck was registering three degrees for most of the trip out of Wilkes County. It would fluctuate between three and nine degrees for the most part and when I got to our destination, it was showing six whopping degrees.
The roads continued to be pretty decent through the trip though with the side roads just a little sketchy. As I was driving, I was considering my options. I could do as planned and shoot that barn which happens to be a barn that I have shot in the snow previously. That brought to mind that I have a number of snowy barn photos in my collection and kind of wanted to do something a tad different. I had really enjoyed shooting the old car under the dusting of snow recently and that got me thinking along those lines. There was one spot that I had always wanted to photograph in the snow but hadn’t ever gotten around to it. The location was one that I have photographed many times over during all kinds of conditions from sun to clouds, to rain, and even fog. I’ve seen it in all seasons as well but never have I been there in the snow. The location is Outlawed Restorations in East Bend and is probably one of my absolute favorite places to photograph.
No matter where I’ve lived, this has always been a bit of a drive for me which I don’t usually care to do in the snow as I have discussed recently. With that reluctance paired with the fact that we just don’t see that kind of snow often, I have yet to see this property under a winter blanket. Admittedly, I was feeling a bit froggy and started to really consider changing up my plans. There was no guarantee that the barn was going to be picturesque and by choosing the barn, I was kind of putting all my eggs in a single basket. By going out to East Bend, I had several subjects that I could work on the property for a bit more variety. I was going to be pretty close by since I was in Yadkinville. The decision was made and after I dropped Toni off, I set my course to East Bend.
The ride out there wasn’t too bad until I turned off of Old 421. That was about the last time I saw the actual road. The remaining five miles of the trip was spent in 4WD and going slow. When I arrived at the shop, the sun was just starting to light the landscape. The temperature had settled in around 5 degrees which was rather chilly considering I was expecting mid teens from the forecast. I got out and went to the bed of the truck to retrieve my gloves and toboggan in an attempt to keep myself warm. I went ahead and pulled out my hand warmers as well because I could tell that it was going to be a cold morning indeed.
There were two different cars that I knew that I wanted to shoot this morning. Both of them are more or less new additions to the collection over the past couple of years. I knew that they were situated in such a way that I would be able to get a good snowy scene around them. I also knew that this was going to be a great chance to use that wide-angle lens that I have convinced myself to get better with this year. One of the cars was a Plymouth that was parked at the far corner of the property, but the first car that I wanted to work with was Dean’s Father’s car which had been drug out of the woods after a tree had fallen and broken the rear window a few years back. I have photographed this car every time I have been here since and have only recently started to get photos that I really liked of it. I had a feeling that the way that the snow would simplify the landscape, I might have a better chance of getting a really good shot of this car this morning.
I was very thankful for the snow because it allowed me to walk without issue through the property while the ice from last week would have been more than difficult to maneuver around in. I got into the area where I figured that I would be needing to place the camera and started to put things together. Working in the snow is very much like working in the sand at the beach. I had to be very careful not to walk through an area that might be in my composition. This meant that I was starting back a little further from where I would probably end up, but I needed to work in slowly. As it turned out, I had stopped at the perfect place for a 50mm composition, but that wasn’t what I had in mind for today. I needed to get in a good deal closer to make use of the wide-angle lens and I knew that I was going to be shooting a vertical composition to take advantage of the tree. The question that I had was where to put the tree in relation to the car.
From past experience, I knew that the tree looked really good when positioned off to the right side of the car, but with the snow on the car, I needed more of a side view of the old Ford. This forced the tree behind the car, but it was a necessary tradeoff to be able to see more of the shape of the car. Without the snow, the front of the car was more expressive, but much of that got lost beneath the blanket of snow. Showing off the side of the car created a much more pleasing angle that defined the car much better.
The sun still wasn’t up yet and the scene was pretty much in the shadows and very blue in color cast. I knew that this was going to be black and white so that the viewer could concentrate more on the structure of the car and tree. I took a bit of time here and moved around to different points in order to get the best angle on the car. I even tried several horizontal compositions which I knew could work as well. I learned quickly though that the snow on the car changed the visual weight of the car and things just appeared bland in a horizontal format. It was the vertical oriented photos that had a much better balance between the tree and the car.
I stuck with this basic concept for a while as the sun started to come up far enough in the sky to illuminate the scene. What I found was that there was a small barn on the other side of the yard which was blocking most of the sun from hitting the car. The lighting was getting too contrasty at the angle that I was shooting to make this work. I decided to abandon the composition that I was shooting and started to look for something else that I could shoot. That was when I realized that the trees to my right were all getting bathed in the warm sunlight which looked great against the blue sky above. If I could figure out a composition from the rear of the car, I would be able to capture that warmth in the trees. There was also less snow on the car at the rear which meant more of the details would show in the photo.
I brought the camera and tripod over to the rear of the car and started to look at the scene. I was still wanting to use the wide-angle, so I was forcing myself to think in those terms. I saw a complete row of cars in the background which I was going to have to deal with because of the lens choice. I’ve shot this angle before, but with a telephoto lens which simplifies the background by including much less of it. Now, I was capturing a bunch of background and in that background was at least a dozen or so cars. Looking at the cars, there were some newer model vehicles that I didn’t want in the frame at all, but there were a few older ones that fit the era of the main subject. Those cars were off to the left with the newer ones just to the right of those. There was a break in the cars a bit further up the hill. My plan was to get into a position where I could include the older cars to the left as small elements in the background while using the car itself to mask the newer vehicles. I would cut the frame right where the next bunch of cars started. For visual balance to the entire image, I chose to use the tree trunk as a framing element to the left with a branch subtly pointing to the Ford.
I really liked this angle because there was very little snow on the trunk which made the car a bit more prominent. It was that presence of the car that allowed me to make this a horizontal composition. The angle of the car and the relationship to the tree created a nice triangle in the foreground which kind of framed the background cars. Everything worked together here, and I really liked the fact that the rear window was missing as that gave another area of the car with no snow.
That back window area became the personality of the car when I started to really look at the image. With the way that the weatherstripping was drooping from the top of the opening and the headliner that was falling, the care started to take on a facial expression with a furrowed brow and a bit of frustration. It set the tone just right for what I was starting to see out of this composition. The warm light in the trees was just above the car and contrasted nicely with the cooler tones of the foreground thanks to the shadow from the barn.
Up until this point, I had not had any filters on the camera because the sky was showing way too much polarization at the wide-angle when I was shooting 90 degrees to the sun. Now that the sun was behind me, the sky was not nearly as problematic. Having more metal showing, it was a good chance to use the polarizer, so I ran back over to the bag and grabbed the filter with my gloved hands trying not to drop it. It made a subtle difference in the way the car looked, and I was glad that I had gotten it. I only did a few frames here before I was happy with the way that the light was looking. That was all that it took.
By this point, I was starting to get uncomfortably cold but I was managing. Fortunately, there was no wind, so I was able to last longer than I thought I would. I knew that I wanted to get another subject before I left, and that was going to have to be the Plymouth that I had wanted to shoot. You can actually see it in the background, to the left of the last photo. This car is situated off on its own and makes for a really good subject to shoot in its entirety. I grabbed all my gear and started the short walk over to that car being careful not to put any footprints into the snow that might interfere with any photos that I might want to shoot.
When I started to look at the car and the way the light was hitting it, I found that the light was better on the passenger side and the driver’s side was still pretty well covered in snow. That kind of forced my hand as to which direction to shoot in. I was no longer looking at a photo of a car isolated from the crowd, but rather a foreground car with a couple of trucks in the background. I knew that this composition worked as I had shot it several times before. This was going to be the first time with snow which was exciting for me. I really liked how the snow had drifted up on the tall grasses at the front bumper which helped to draw attention to the wheel that was turned in the correct direction when looking at the car from this angle. It all seemed to come together nicely, and I worked out the fine tuning of the composition by getting the camera in just right place at the right elevation. I just had to make sure that there was enough separation between the Plymouth and the Chevy in the background.
The wide-angle lens worked well for this because it made the Plymouth a good bit larger in the frame compared to the trucks in the background. In fact, you can only barely see the larger Chevy on the other side of the more dominant one. The lens helped to simplify this scene quite nicely and was the right choice for this shot. The perspective that I was seeing here created a really nice “V” in the foreground much like the previous composition with the rear of the Ford and tree. This is a really great way to introduce a composition, and this was the second time that everything had lined up perfectly for that to happen.
I didn’t spend as long here as I thought that I would because the sun was starting to shine over on this area and the shadows that were being created were not ideal. I spent a few minutes looking around to see if there was anything else that I wanted to shoot in this area but decided that the light was getting too harsh for that. Instead, I grabbed everything and went back to the original Ford once again as it was starting to see some sunlight that I thought might benefit the photo.
When I got back to the car, the side of it was starting to get some warm sunlight and the background trees were picking up that same warm color. There were even parts of the large tree above the car which were starting to glow a bit. I worked quickly to find the right place to put the camera and had to rethink the original compositions that I had shot. Now that there was light on the car, I didn’t need to be quite as low to make the car stand out in the frame. I could actually get a bit higher and give the car more dimension while still including a good portion of the tree. As it turned out, I got that same “V” to introduce the composition that I had arrived at in the previous two compositions.
The image was looking really good in the camera as I started to get things put together in the frame. I shot a series of images as the sun moved across the car and considered it done after a few minutes. My fingers were numb and I could no longer find the shutter release button with my thumb. As I was losing fine motor skills, I decided it was time to call it a day and pack things up. I had been out here for right at 45 minutes and that was plenty long enough. In that time, I had shot 31 frames which is more than I had done with the barn recently, but still nothing like I would have usually done at this location. The fact of the matter was I was cold and ready get back in the truck.
While I was headed back home, I thought that I might as well go by the barn that was close to the house to see if I could get a shot of that. The sun was still low enough that it would likely work out just fine. I was only about 45 minutes away at this point. There were even a few small clouds in the sky to the West that I was hoping to be able to include in the composition if things worked out for me.
When I got there, the clouds were still there and the light was good. There was a problem though. I was seeing lots of cows milling around inside the fence in front of the barn and off to the side. With the fence looking like it did, that was just too much confusion of elements in front of the barn, and I wasn’t able to figure out how to keep the composition simple. While the barn was still very pretty to look at, it just wasn’t a photo today. At least the logging truck was not there which had plagued me all during the Fall.
I might not have been able to get the barn, but it was a nice feeling to have chosen correctly this morning when I decided to go out to East Bend. At least I was able to get some photos without having to scout all around to find a subject to shoot. I might not have gotten any brand-new subjects in front of the camera, but at least I can say that I’ve now photographed those familiar cars in the snow which I have never been able to do before. In my book that is a win!
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the photos that have come about. It was enjoyable for me, although, I really didn’t care that much for being cold. The numbness is temporary, but the photos are forever. Well, more than likely they are forever since they are backed up in the cloud, as well as in five different hard drives locally in addition to the computer hard drive. They should be around for a very long time to come.
Until next time…
