Winter began its annual battle with Fall earlier this year than has ever been recorded in Minnesota. The cold air came pounding down from the north teaming up with moisture from the south to blanket the area in tiny little white crystals bringing the beautiful fall colors to an abrupt end. Some plants managed to hold on to their brightly colored leaves through the snowstorm allowing me to capture a few pictures typically unavailable during the winter. While the snow was falling, the temperature remained near freezing. Most of the plants were holding on to what little heat they could causing this fresh snow to melt early in the storm. This allowed me to capture snowflakes and at the same time melted snow dripping from these leaves.
Because these ice crystals were melting quite rapidly I had to take these freehand. There just wasn’t enough time to set up a tripod and get the camera focused from the time a snowflake landed to the time it started to disappear. Fortunately it was daylight allowing me to accomplish this by hand holding the camera and squeezing the shutter button. Often in the time it took to take 10 photos of the same flake, it would begin to deteriorate. I have figured out techniques to photograph snowflakes in these types of conditions but I typically use them in the spring, not the fall so that wasn’t an option on this day. Some of those techniques include placing the cloth to be shot on in the freezer ahead of time to make it colder than the surrounding air once the snow begins to fall. In addition, I may place ice packs underneath that cloth to keep it cold preserving a particular flake even longer. The heat from the camera can still be an issue which I haven’t really figured out a good way to deal with yet during warm snowfalls. In any event, I wasn’t able to use those aides for this snowfall which worked out fine as the fall leaves provided a different opportunity. I enjoyed combining the textures of these leaves with the shapes of each unique ice crystal. It’s just beginning and I hope to have several more opportunities to photograph the beautiful ice and snow.
