First Snow of '09

Since my last post, I've been fighting a bit of artists' block. The co-op (not surprisingly) fell through, because artists are generally flighty and disorganized. It was a little bit of a letdown, but I didn't have my hopes very high in the first place.

Between then and now, I've been fighting off feelings of being completely uninspired. Everything that I thought had the potential to be interesting under a microscope fell through. Frost is uninteresting ice hexes. Sulfite crystals that form on wine corks look like boring old amethyst. My last hope rested in snow.

Snow is unbelievably challenging to photograph. The subjects are only there for a few seconds, the distance from the lens is constantly changing as they melt, and each snowflake is generally attached to bits of other flakes, if not several other whole ones. All of this makes it extremely difficult to capture a whole snowflake, all by itself, in focus.

Today was the first flake-forming snow of the year at our house, which meant throwing on gear and getting outside as soon as I woke up. I took 128 shots, and was really only happy with one flake, but it was enough to restore my inspiration. My goal of having a whole portfolio of decent snow shots might actually become a reality. Here's a heavily cropped, low-res image of that lovely little flake.