Winter – A Great Simplifier

Winter is a great opportunity to craft some simple, yet compelling images. All of the complexity of nature is hidden under a blanket of gleaming white snow: no ragged grasses, sticks, twigs or other visual distractions. And possibly the best advantage, if you are a landscape photographer: sunrise and sunset, those moments of glorious light, are at more reasonable hours. Well, I think that 6:00 in the morning is better than 4:00. Snow and winter also bring their own challenges: glare, exposure, white balance, and of course, the cold.

While looking for a nice, stark tree to complete a commission, I was also keeping my eye out for potential locations for simple compositions. A simple composition sounds easy, but it turns out to be very hard to find. You want very little clutter, strong lines, good contrast, an obvious subject, suggestive shapes, and a nice play between shadow and light. Oh and a perspective that allows you to get as much of that as possible.

I had found a site with great potential: a small beaver pond with a few dead trees. My goal was to capture tension between trunks and shadows. My first visit, just after a fresh snowfall, was a bit of a wash, as the pond had been crisscrossed by several deer tracks: so much for no distracting elements. Another challenge I discovered on that first recce: there was no perspective that allowed me to avoid the cluttered pond shore. To get away from the complicating wood-line, I already had a solution: height. Harry Nowell had captured a compelling cross country ski race, by lugging a ladder along the course.

To get away from animal tracks, I needed to get back after a snowfall, but before the critters. I also needed the shadows to fall in a pleasing direction. After several trips, at different times of the day, I managed to get the two shots here. Of course, lugging the ladder across a semi-frozen swamp, through trees, across running streams, onto a beaver dam and into position, all at -10 degrees is a fun and entertaining story in itself.

The lesson? Once you find a spot with potential, visit it regularly through the season: as weather, circumstances, snowfall and a whole host of other variables change, you may get completely different images from the very same location. And my favourite lesson? I’ll be documenting the results of that, in the next blog.