Snow Days, January 2024
From January eleventh to January thirteenth, 2024, we acquired a foot or more of snow in John Day, Oregon and up to several feet in the surrounding mountains. The following is my attempt to capture the experience:
Ideally, the woodpile would be covered with a tarp, but it wasn’t. Poor planning, perhaps, made for difficult application of a tarp and it’s been repeatedly blown off since. For this photo’s sake, I don’t mind so much.
I can’t say why, really, but I like this photograph. I think it’s that in a few years, I’ll look back at this photo and the previous image, and these will be the two that make me say, “Man, remember that storm?”
I set the focus manually for a failed set of images prior to this shot and forgot to refocus; the focal plane stayed too near for my backyard cross country skiing adventure to be tack sharp and in focus but somehow I think I like this better anyway. It feels like an old film photograph and the feeling is more than the image itself.
Moose gets a treat! Also, eye-autofocus is incredible.
While shoveling out the driveway, I noticed fine details in the flakes resting on the roof of the car in the cover of the rooftop tent and ran to grab the long lens. I’ve probably never wanted a macro lens more than I did at that moment.
On Sunday, January 14, I took a drive east of Prairie City, OR into the forest in hopes of capturing something interesting with trees covered in snow. Perhaps this composition is cliche, but it scratched the itch, and I love it anyway.
I’m fascinated by snow. It’s my third-favorite weather event after a sunrise, sunset, or a beautiful spring or fall day with blue sky and puffy cumulus clouds rolling through. In photography, it removes distractions and creates a more minimal scene, allowing a subject, leading lines, patterns, or composition to take the lead more easily.
Standing atop Blue Mountain Pass looking east toward Unity, OR. The ground was clear but a high fog or low cloud floated through the treetops.
Love this thing. It’s been a wonderful vehicle, and I cannot overstate how wonderful it is to have studded snow tires this year. They’ve been worth every penny.
Gates of the Malheur. Crossing into Grant Co. at the top of Blue Mountain pass welcomes a transition from the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to the Malheur National Forest of Eastern Oregon.
Perhaps surprisingly to anyone reading this, this photograph is one of my favorites in this series and one that I am most proud of. About 6 months ago, I came to realize that my favorite images from last year were photo-sets - multiple images that captured the story of an experience rather than a single, technically perfect image with no compelling feeling or story. Since that time, my aim has been to tell stories with multiple photos. This image pays perfect homage to that idea, and it’s the kind of image I want to capture a lot of this year - it’s one I’ll look back on that fills gaps in the story, one that provides setting and context to the others. It’s the details in this image for me - I can look at it for a long time. Snow covering over half of the sign, the reddish bark of ponderosa pines, fir trees caked in snow, and fog rolling through the treetops.
As a photographer, I naturally wanted to put this thing in the middle of the road at a slight angle and take some snaps with the 100-400mm, but that’s a terrible idea on a main highway at the top of a mountain pass in the fog with snow-covered roads, right? So here it is in the pullout. I’m still very happy with this and the signs, which would normally annoy me and feel like a distraction, add to the story and context of the image and balance each other out on opposite sides of the scene.
I just love snow covered trees. They’re magical, and you can’t tell me otherwise. I put the drone up in hopes the clearing in the distance would provide more details from above, but found this curve in the highway aimed at the small clearing and I like this better instead.
Does this image work without the very slight S-curve in the road toward the horizon? We’ll never know. It somehow feels like just enough to stir my curiosity and make me wonder what’s just around the corner. And, of course, I love snow covered trees.
I’ve wanted to take a photograph of this old barn since the first time I saw it five years ago, and I somehow never have. When the sky is clear, mountains are visible in the background over the tops of the trees center-frame. But on this particular day, the low clouds or high fog, snow, and an empty highway allowed me to come to a stop in the road to take my first ever photo of this scene. It feels like a painting. I like the balance between the taller trees on the edges of the scene, and the balance between the barn and the tree inside the fence of the corral, as well as just enough variation in the trees behind the barn. That the foreground and sky are completely removed by snow and fog highlights the shapes and composition of the scene.
The light on the left is what caused me to turn off on the drive home, but this image felt more in line with the goal of the mission than finding a great composition of the light on the left. This scene makes me ask more questions and spend a bit more time in the image - What’s happening in the background on the left? What is this unusual signage on the right?
As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed the time you’ve spent here, and thank you for taking the time to read along. I want to do a better job of telling stories with photographs in 2024, and I hope you’ll follow along in the journey.
Until next time,