“If the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, gets his tail in the water, nothing is accomplished..”

"Those are pearls that were his eyes."

It’s been snowing here in west Michigan, the steady wave after wave of lake effect snow that comes with the first real blast of arctic air. And so tonight brought the second round of snowflake photography of the winter.

Unlike the wildflowers or dragonfly chronicles, I have few new observations to offer about day to day changes in the environment. The garage remains essentially unchanged.

The sustained cold spell has meant that the garage has cooled down quickly, and unlike last year when it took weeks for the interior temperature to drop comfortably below freezing, this winter the garage is already quite cold.

So – on with the snow crystal photography.

First off, I decided to abandon using the new Pentax K10D for this venture. It’s a great camera and I’ll be posting a rave review of it in due time, but it really is not the best tool for this job. I need TTL flash that works with an archaic system of bellows, extension tubes, and reverse mounted lenses. The K10D’s flash system is marvelous – but no longer has the backwards compatibility to work with this kind of setup. So, my trusty *ist-D has a permanent commission.

So tonight I picked up more or less where I left off, catching snow flakes on a glass plate. I was not happy with the results of session from a few days ago. I have my excuses – the snow crystals were of poor quality, I was struggling to adapt to new gear, the garage had not quite cooled down enough, etc… Tonight ‘s results are a bit better – I can raise some of the same complaints, but I feel a little closer to the flow of things now.

After all – one of my best snowflake photographs was taken on a March day. Then the crystals were only so-so and in the warm temperatures they melted as they hit the glass. But still the results were fine.

When you enter a body of water, you walk through the shallow areas. That’s the awkward phase. But suddenly you reach a point where the water lifts you, and if you can swim awkwardness is gone and movement is easy. And then you reach the point where the current carries you along, and you are really in the flow of things.

At this point, with snowflake photography, I’m still wading into the river. My ankles are wet. I waded into it with wildflower photography last spring and with dragonfly photos in the summer. Eventually the current took hold, and I drifted along for a while. Maybe my sorrow at the passing of the dragons was just an expression of the frustration of being washed ashore again.

Better snow crystals are on the way - maybe not in the next post, or even the post after, but in time.

The handful of snow flake photographs from tonight's session can be found in the Image Stream.