A Wider Angle
February 2010
A Winter's Tale

Happy New Year.  You may have read/heard of the snow we had in the UK over Christmas.  The more hysterical tabloids described it as a "Whitemare" and were predicting once again the end of civilization as we knew it.  At least until the next big scary news item came along.  Yes it was very cold and yes there was a lot of snow and yes the roads were difficult but it wasn't THAT bad.  In fact for a photographer it was truly inspirational.

I had been thinking for a few weeks about how good it would be to have some real snow at Christmas instead of the usual cold, dark greyness.  From a study of geeky website which tracks the North Atlantic jetstream I had a feeling this might be the year.  And so it came to pass that we had a series of days of deep, crisp powder snow under a brilliant blue sky.  Even the light on cloudy days seemed to take on a magical quality due to the reflectivity of the snow and the thinness of the cloud cover.  Suddenly places I had known intimately all my life were transformed in a way I had not seen for over 20 years.

Images I had visualised and filed away in my head years ago of how a particular scene or place would look under a covering of snow came spilling out.  The main technical consideration was exposure.  Snow is white (you knew that, eh?) but unless you are careful, your camera's light meter will see the snow as way too bright and underexpose.  Result - horrible grey looking snow.  Answer - compensate by adding up to 1 stop of light.  Final result - nice white snow.

Many shots were postcard/calendar looking stuff, really nice, but I also, perversely, wanted some more moody stuff.  In the Northern Lake District near Keswick there is a Neolithic (i.e. around 3200BC) stone circle high on a plateau surrounded by mountains.  No-one knows its precise purpose and all I can say is that the guys who used it must have been pretty tough if they were there in the same conditions as me.  Mind you we WPS members are made of stern stuff.  Below zero, 20kph wind, lying snow with much cloud but with the sun occasionally appearing.  The shot called for the stone circle in the foreground with the snow covered bulk of the most impressive mountain of the group, Blencathra, looming behind lit up, hopefully, by a burst of sun.  45 minutes later with my hands numb from the cold it happened, briefly.  A wrap as they say.

The lesson is – even if you don’t have a camera with you, get familiar with places and don’t stop looking for images.  Better still keep a camera with you at all times.  I should take my own advice though.  On my way back home, I got to London and realised I had left all my camera gear and memory cards at my daughter’s house in the Midlands.  No time to go back. Aaarrghh……..visions of expensive FedEx consignments.  Enter Air New Zealand.  Mid flight I happened to be talking to the Concierge and happened to mention the missing camera. “Don’t worry,” she said, seeing my obvious unhappiness, “I have a cunning plan” (she was much better looking than Baldrick as well!).  “When I get back to London and go home to Birmingham, I’ll meet up with your daughter, collect your camera, bring it on my next flight to Hong Kong, hand it to my colleague who will bring it to Auckland and you can collect it from there next Saturday.”   And that’s exactly what happened.  Talk about service.  So a huge thank you to Air NZ, I’ll never forget what they did.

See you around.  Geoff