It's cold.

The Winter has come and, barring something amazing in the next couple weeks, has for the most part retreated. Going after a shot representative of this season was difficult, because what is Winter really? Ice? Cloudy skies? 20 inches of snow? Winter is whatever you're used to in your neck of the woods from Dec through early March; on the East Coast of the US, it's rubbing your hands together while you wait for your cars' airconditioning to warm up. It's Winter Weather Advisories every time there's a threat of precipitation. It's heat and electric bills doubling over the previous month. It's the sun setting before 5pm. It's warm tea on a Saturday afternoon after a couple hours of shoveling...I think you get the idea.

All that said, I figured a nice snowy day would be perfect for me to shoot in. Fool! The first problem with this plan is that when you have light snowflakes, they tend to float and drift upwards rather than falling straight down, which gets shot ruining water droplets on your lens. The second problem was that since the snowflakes during this days' shower were extremely small, the shots end up looking like they're soft on focus more than appearing that it's actually snowing. If I had all the time in the world, I would've shot a set when the flakes were huge, but ya can't win them all. I was happy to take on this challenge so I can keep working outside of my comfort zone. While the level of entertainment this post will bring you is up for debate, me enjoying this process isn't ha.

Keeping lens dry...sorta.



I wandered around for an hour or two in my area looking for a great representation of what Winter is; I ended up running into some old stomping grounds in the process. This old mansion below I spoke of in the beginning of the Fall ended up being a repeat destination. Something interesting to add about this building is what I learned while doing an Art exhibit of sorts a couple weeks ago. I had a large print of this same structure that I took this past November on display and we ended up getting into a conversation about it's architecture and history.

The gentlemen explained that this was likely an old plantation mansion which probably dates back to the 1800s. As you all know at that time, Maryland (and most of America for that matter) still participated in legal slavery (for my International readers who are unaware, slavery in the US was legally abolished with the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865). He also told me about a few other locations in Maryland where historical buildings like this are preserved and I think I'll try seeking a few out for the sake of documentation. I've always been into history, almost minoring in it during college, because learning about what was before your time allows you to put right now in perfect context. Being aware of previous successes and failures also does a pretty good job of keeping yesterday's poor choices by society from being revisited.

Now that we'll have a 50 degree-high day or two, during the next several weeks while we await Spring, all those thoughts of time flying by too fast come to the forefront again. The Sun staying out past 6pm makes it a bit easier to accept though.