January Light #15165

The Story

In this winter landscape of a frozen lake with a mountain behind, lowering late afternoon daylight skims and accents the treetops. A thin layer of new snow was blown across the smooth hard ice overnight as the temperature plummeted to below zero with the wind chill. Not surprisingly, the ice froze hard and thick but remained very clear.

The blown snow was granular like very tiny balls, another sign of a deep, hard cold. The wind forced the snow into narrow S lines that wove across the lake. Thankfully, although it was still extremely cold, I wasn’t photographing in the wind by that afternoon.

I ended up with very little time to make this picture as the sun was nearly done for the day and falling fast. But that low sun angle really added to all the edges throughout this picture, accenting them and bringing the picture into more life. And because of that, black and white was the best choice for this winter landscape of frigid beauty, the world frozen solid.

I took other shots here down into the ice itself, like this one, Deep Clear Freeze #14665. It’s a picture showing the clear ice frozen down to the bottom of the shallow shoreline as well as the blown snow laying in sweeping curves across it. Natural beauty, frozen solid.

Location: near Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania. Picture and story © Andrew Dierks