The Quiet Picture

Random rants and occasional photographs

Jan 14

Snow monsters

Category: snow
ISO 800, F8, 1/125

Now we’re talking! Snow, snow, snow, snow… and more snow! We haven’t seen this much since early November. I’ll take it.

When I had made my way to Hembygdsgården, it looked like the weather would clear up and some blue sky started to appear between the clouds. But it was just a brief scare, because soon the clouds moved back in and the wind picked up, whipping the snow in my face as I walked back home. The entertainment value of my walk rapidly decreased when the cold started sneaking in through my clothes, but I’m sure that the people further down in the south are suffering considerably more with what the storm winds and power outages.

This weather doesn’t happen often so I wanted to make use of all of the daylight and took off for another walk. The wind was steadily increasing and the gusts ripped the snow off the trees and created momentary curtains with zero visibility. The air was just simply full of snow and the light was fading fast even though it wasn’t anywhere near sunset yet. The forest was most definitely not crowded and I got to blaze my own trail through the snow. In fact, just about the only people I’ve seen today were those who were ploughing the snow. Plenty of that…

As I was making my way, suddenly a foreign shape emerged through the snow. A forest machine - they have started cutting the forest near my house. A few hundred meters further I came across another, so it looks like they mean business. The monsters are loose.

The above picture may appear a bit dark, but I have left it like that on purpose. There really wasn’t much light to go around, in fact I was really struggling with the shutter speeds. At ISO 800 and F6.3, I only got a 1/40 shutter. I ended up with a sharp image thanks to the short focal length and image stabilisation, but ideally, I would prefer faster shutters. Usually when it’s snowing, I set out without the tripod because the idea is to catch the falling snowflakes, which requires fast shutters. I’d rather not go under 1/100, but it also depends on how fast the snow is falling. So in the above image, there isn’t a falling flake to be seen, although trust me there were plenty around. The first image in this blog entry on the other hand is showing plenty of flakes!

Now we’ll just wait and see if the winter 06/07 pattern repeats itself, i.e. snow followed by a warm spell and melt. SMHI is threatening with +5 degrees centigrade for tomorrow and Tuesday.

But next week aside, today was a great day!

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