Seems to me it was only last week when I expressed my readiness for more snow. In the classic fashion of “be careful what you wish for” we do have fresh snow now, and quite a bit of it. Enough that I’ve been essentially trapped in my house since Sunday morning, at least as far as driving anywhere goes. Even walking, should I be so inclined, isn’t much of a tempting prospect due to the heavy slogging through the rather dense fresh snow with its underlay of ice from the freezing rain that preceded it.
I had plans for a photo shoot south of the city on Saturday morning. I was hoping for action shots of the interesting herd I tried to photograph in early December, the day that my old camera finally refused to function at all. I’ve been sulking about that ever since, so this was going to be my chance at this herd with the nicely functioning new camera in tow. In a rare moment of sensible mental processing, I decided against this particular shoot in view of the snow and wind that greeted me on Saturday morning. That site is far enough south of the city to be very open, and I felt the visibility wasn’t going to be there either for taking the pictures or indeed for successfully navigating the narrow country road to get there. However, with my on-going mania for photographing horses in falling snow (apparently all the shots of this sort that I did last winter weren’t quite enough) I opted instead to pop out to the “favourite herd” that is much closer and in a more enclosed environment where the wind wouldn’t be such a big factor. The usual cold hands aside, that shoot was quite satisfactory, although I always forget how dark (or at least non-light) it is even in mid-day when we have a good snow happening.
It continued to snow and blow all Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, and intermittently Sunday night and today. School buses have been discontinued, some city buses can’t do their routes, garbage trucks are pulled from service for the moment, and things are a tad difficult in general as far as day to day getting around goes. I didn’t even try to get to the barn yesterday to see my horse as would be usual, ditto for today, although Mondays are maintenance days at the stables and we riders don’t go Mondays in any event. I do plan to try for tomorrow. Must remember to put a shovel in the vehicle just in case. If I don’t get stuck backing out of my own driveway onto our street, I should have a good chance of making it.
So today’s shots feature—wait for it— snow! Shot one shows some of the brood mare herd hunkering in by their hay pile, with their tails to the wind. Horses always face away from the prevailing wind. The turnouts at Ebon where I ride are all on the west side of the stables, so if you have to bring horses in during a bad blow (either rain in summer or snow in winter) you are leading them straight into the wind (bad weather here invariably comes on an east wind), a situation they are never happy about, although once you get them into the warmth and cozy atmosphere of the barn they tend to cheer up right away.
Shot two is a close-up of the snow caked on the rump and sides of one of the mares. You can see by the wetness of her coat that the temperature wasn’t too cold–just a few degrees below freezing, although today it is dropping fast.
We walked the dogs as usual Saturday evening since although snowy and windy it wasn’t that cold, and I was taken by the image of the empty school playground skating rink all lit up and ready for customers. I returned to the rink after the dog walk, with camera and monopod in tow, for a less than successful shoot. The monopod broke, and I couldn’t get the camera stabilized on it. It was dark enough that I really should have had a tripod with me but that was going to take too much set-up time for the conditions I was working in. As I was getting back to the car, I took a couple of last hand-held shots. I had changed the setting on the camera and the flash went off for this one. Not what I had intended but I actually really like the effect of the bright light bouncing off and magnifying the effect of all the individual snowflakes. I’ll have to remember that for future night-time snowing photo efforts.
We have a thick clematis right outside our south living room window where the little sparrows like to cluster out of the wind when the weather is bad. This also provides a “kitty TV” opportunity for our elderly cat who enjoys getting on the plant table and watching the birds that are perched only inches from her on the other side of the glass, as documented in shot four. The “bird vine” is just behind her head in the window to the left.
Shot five shows the front of my house on Sunday afternoon. The large snow-covered shapes in the top half are my studio windows. Usually the snow doesn’t build up on the windows, but I think the freezing rain created an ice ledge at the bottom of the windows sufficient to prevent the snow from sliding off. I have a lot of houseplants over-wintering in the studio and they aren’t going to be happy about the lack of light. Since the temperature is dropping into the minus 20s for this week, I may be stuck with this situation for a while, as nothing is going to be melting any time soon. I don’t think I’ll make any comments on what I wish for weather-wise in the coming week. I’ll just keep out of it. It might be the safest option.

©Copyright 2009 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.