Embracing the Elements

I expect things to slow down this time of year but somehow between the holidays and getting hit with that flu that's been going around it's been a month an a half now, which I didn't expect. With both of these things winding down now that just leaves the cold to contend with. The cold is an obstacle that last year all but brought my photographic activities to a halt, but it's also an opportunity so I've vowed that this year I won't let winter stand in my way, at least not to the same degree.

Winter changes everything. At least it does where I live and for most of you living at roughly similar or higher latitudes I presume it does for you as well. The land takes on a new character. Favorite subjects you/ve photographed too many times in the past can take on a new look. Scenes that might not have looked like much amid the cluttered overgrowth of warmer seasons are transformed by the barren cold and a fresh coat of snow. Even the snow and ice itself can become the subject for photographs that exist at no other time and may never appear quite that way again.

 If you're fortunate enough to live near one of the Great Lakes, winter offers another opportunity that exists in only a few other places in the world. The Great Lakes, any of them really, are a bit like little fresh water oceans. The the lakes are vast enough to be photographed as seascapes, but being fresh water, when winters are cold enough vast quantities of ice accumulate along the shore forming temporary desolate landscapes that differ from year to year.

It must of course change quite a bit over the course of a winter, but having always lived a few minutes drive from the shore I've never really gotten the sense of how it might change on a week to week, even day to day basis. This year then I resolved to visit the shoreline throughout the winter to see how things change, and of course take advantage of whatever photographic opportunities such changes might present. Only a few days into a cold snap following a green and rainy Christmas I made my first jaunt out to the beach yesterday expecting to see little more than the first hints of a line of ice clinging to the shore. Apparently I had the whole thing figured wrong. When I arrived at my usual haunt, the stretch of shore strewn with the ruins of the old Erie Beach Amusement Park, the ice had already created a new landscape of low wind blown hills extending perhaps a hundred metres out from shore. I had been hoping for less really. I had imagined getting images that included ice and water but the new shoreline was 100 meters further on across ice I knew better than to attempt to cross however thick it might appear.

After wandering around for quite some time and making a few exposures I didn't imagine would amount to much I finally found that it was possible to follow the old concrete pier that, back in the heyday of the amusement park had received visitors arriving by boat from Buffalo NY. Here I was able to get my seascape compositions complete with ice in the foreground I had in mind. The greater than expected volume of ice at last seemed like a bit of a bonus as it gave an Antarctic feel to the scene.

I don't put much stock in long term forecasts so I'll take the winter as it comes, which is my default plan for most things anyway. In any case there is more to watch than just what happens along the Lake Erie shore. There's also the Niagara River including the Falls and all the surrounding things mist might freeze to. Then there's all the streams, creeks, woods and so on. It just takes the time and, when the temperature starts to drop, the will.