Weekday Wanderings

My parents live in an adult community, Shadow Lake Village. On the last morning of my visit I went wandering about the place.

This is the view from their backyard. That's the green for hole #7. Dad, and I, were once avid golfers. And he (but sadly not I) has played this course on more than one occasion.

As noted in the Needle Ice post, I look down on a regular basis. Look closely (bigafy!) you'll see some nice snow flake crystals. Look along the center vein of the leaf on the right. I so wish I had my macro set up with me.

This is the view, albeit across the street, from the front of the house. A nice little wooded area with a stream flowing into the same watershed as the Poricy Park Stream. In fact, if I were to have continued sauntering in this direction we'd come to Poricy Park Pond. However this stream flows into Shadow Lake. Both of which then drain into the Navesink River.

But I instead head off toward Shadow Lake.

As I approached I heard the calling of Canada Geese.

And looking up, which I am also want to do, I saw them. And these are two lucky shots as I had my point and shoot camera with me, and couldn't really see what I was aiming at in the view screen. So I point and shot.

The lake was significantly larger than I expected. One gets a brief view form the road I take to get to my parents, but the lake curves and extends a nice distance.

I was also surprised to come upon a large number of canoes, kayaks, and small row boats. A much more active community than I had surmised.

As I continued along the lakeside trail, I found myself at the other end of the 7th hole. So I headed down the frozen fairway and back to my parent's place.

But not before I looked down one more time.

Rime

I have tried on multiple occasions to take pictures of snow crystals. With varying degrees of success. I have three main impediments.

First, I live in an area that doesn't get much snow.

Second, I don't have a dedicated snow photography system.

Three, I work. So even when it is snowing, I may not be able to take advantage.

And then, when I do get a chance, the flakes are all rimey!

The rime is what makes these snow crystals all "bumpy". When falling, the snow falls through a zone of super cooled water droplets. And those droplets freeze onto the snow crystals.

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To see what someone who really knows what they are doing can achieve check out Ken Libbrecht's Snow Crystals site. Enjoy!

Snow Day

Just a little.

Monday as I left for work it was flurrying. With nice big snow crystals. The kind you can see without optical aid. I so wanted to say home and get out my DSLR camera and try for something like this.

Instead I used my pocket camera to fire off a few shots, of which this was the best. The crystals are very rimey, covered in little dots of ice, visible when the image is bigafied.

I so prefer not working.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

I love snow. And I have as long as I can remember. My oldest memory of snow is being in our yard with the snow up to my waist (drifts no doubt); the yard was new and different. I couldn't wait to explore this curiously changed place. Later I remember sledding down Highland Ave, the road I grew up on, for hours and hours. I'd run and jump on my sled, following the line of neighborhood kids down the road. Snowballs would bombard the cars that dared to interrupt our fun. My memories are full of snowy winter days, many more than we get today. I know it's warmer now, as the bay never freezes over as it did when I was young.

My parents still live in that house on Highland Ave, but the snow of recent past doesn't cover the road for sledding (and few kids live in the old neighborhood, we've all grown and moved away). Until this year that is, as there have been several snowstorms of 12" or more.

My friends think I'm nuts, but I was truly bummed that I missed the two blizzards which hit the east coast of the US, being off on my annual Florida pilgrimage. (They also think I'm nuts for other reasons we won't go into here ...) But I really was disappointed, having missed wandering in the solitude of the freshly fallen snow (and perhaps snapping a picture or two). Alas, I only got to see the aftermath, the dirty plow piles in parking lots and along the side of the road.

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Several years ago I discovered the work of Ken Libbrecht and the beauty of snow crystals, via his wonderful book, The Snowflake, Winter's Secret Beauty. And I've been trying to get snowflake pictures like his ever since. 

To do so I need it to be snowing (duh!), to have a camera handy (usually not a problem), and have the time to shoot (i.e., not be at work). That happened today. As I was heading out this morning to run some errands I noticed the flakes were large, perhaps as large as a quarter inch. So it was back inside to grab my camera and ...

... I got this (as always, click to bigafy). The snow crystals are on the window of my car, and I'm inside shooting out. (Note the six pointed water drop in the upper right.)

I was shooting with a DSLR, a Canon 50D, and a 100 mm macro lens. Autofocus was not working, the camera wanting to focus through the window, not on it. And, as evidenced by the melted flake, the temperature was such that the flakes did not last long.

It was also a bit windy, so the flakes often broke on impact. There's plenty of snowflake shrapnel in these images.

The wind and the melting resulted in the flakes sliding down the window, further complicating focusing.

As it continued to warm up the flakes started to clump together. And as you can see from the water drops, flakes were spending less and less time on the window. Perhaps I was warming things up sitting inside the (not running) car?

The clumping continued and I got a few more keepers. But the clumps tended to impact harder, resulting in more shrapnel. The end was near.

This is a mostly melted flake, a "skeleton" flake. If you look closely you can see hints of its former glory. By now, the flakes were essentially melting on impact. By the time I got the camera on the flake and focused these skeletons were all that was left.

So I put the camera down, and finally drove off to do my errands.

I had fun taking these shots. They aren't great images. But they are good enough to show (what's that cliche about a talking dog?).

(Click here to see another example of my snowflake imagery skills.)

In With The Old, Week Two

Snow Crystals (January 2005)

I took this, and several other, snow crystal images with the same digicam I used for the Yosemite image. I had recently read Kenneth Libbrechts's excellent The Snowflake, Winter's Secret Beauty and was primed to recognize the different types of snow crystals. In this image we have several types including capped columns, ridged plates, split stars, spatial dendrites, and triangular crystals. Who knew there were so many different types?

These flakes were on the driver's side door window of my car. I took them while stopped at a light on my way home form work. There were some rather large flakes mixed in and I was recognizing the different types. I remember thinking how cool that was. So I grabbed my camera, set it on macro mode, and shot away (until another car drove up behind me). I've not seen similar conditions since.

None of my images hold a candle to those in Libbrecht's books. But I was very excited to get any recognizable flakes at all.  And I keep hoping for snow.

Click here to visit Libbrectht's site if you'd like to see what a real snow photographer can do.