Spring has arrived! Although snow from a late-season storm accents the landscape in higher elevations, there’s no mistaking it’s spring. I wish I could add the haunting trumpet notes of the sandhill crane that accompanied this image. Their calls echoed through the mountains as I stood at the edge of the lake observing where land was reflected into the water—painted in long, soft brushstrokes. Pure magic.
My garlic is up. There are buds on the trees. A single day can have sunshine, rain, snow, graupel, and hoarfrost. It must be spring. The hoarfrost pictured above was particularly lovely—its uniform crystalline spikes sprouting from every surface. The landscape glittered beneath the bright blue sky.
I’ll miss the tranquility of winter’s palette. The indigo blue of the mountains peeking through their snowy white blanket and providing the perfect backdrop for yellow fields of stubble. Green is waiting in the wings for soon everything dormant spring will spring to life. For now, I’ll enjoy winter’s final offerings of crystalline formations.
Spring is the perfect time to spot snow rollers. They’re a meteorological event that can happen when conditions are just right—strong wind and a particular texture of light, not too sticky, snow. This trio of rollers had the added advantage of slope to get them on their way.
In the background is a partial 22 degree halo. The bright spot at the top of it is a faint upper tangent arc.
Last week, I thought spring had arrived—garlic is up, along with alliums and tulips and bird wars over prime nesting spots have begun—but she was just kidding. Have a wonderful adventure-filled week. I’m off to shovel the evening’s dump of snow.
It’s been a great season for ice formations and this one added a new one to my collection—pancake ice. It can form when there’s a frazil component to thinner ice combined with wave action.
The slushy frazil ice is tossed onto the edges of the larger ice pieces creating a lily-pad like appearance. Floating and spinning on the lake’s surface they created an everchanging element to the landscape. With spring bearing down like a freight train—the bears are out— I’m never sure if the ice I see will be the last of the season.
Lenticulars are a visible sign of mountain waves in the air. This particular cloud is a classic example of an orographic wave cloud—for scale, notice the truck in the bottom right corner—what you don’t see in this image are the mountains to the left.
A good visualization of how these form is to picture ripples created by water flowing over an obstruction in a stream.
I first photographed one of these clouds in Idaho. It looked for all the world like a massive wedge tornado…but, no rotation, and it was a storm-free afternoon. Years later, Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Appreciation Society https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/ identified it for me as lenticular.
I can’t see these clouds without David Bowie’s 1969 song, Space Oddity, running through my head.
This cloud hovered for perhaps ten minutes then vanished. And the truck? It disappeared too…
Clear ice is more of a spring phenomenon, so it was lovely to find patches last weekend over the colorful rocks found in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB Canada. When the winds are calm, and water with less impurities freezes slowly, air bubbles are squeezed out.
Walking on it was magical—I’ll endeavor to place the link to that video below.
https://www.instagram.com/sherylsonnenberg_photography/reels/
Take time for nature. Explore its ever-changing beauty.
As well my husband knows, I could look at rocks for hours. And if nature should glaze them in a layer of ice, he knows he might as well pull up a stump!
The pinks, greens, reds, and beiges of these rocks are stunning on a calm summer day submerged in the cold waters of Waterton, a mountainous park in Alberta, Canada. But on this winter morning when ice formed around nucleation sites, perhaps in this case, grains of dust or surface irregularities, the rocks were swathed in intricate lace patterns. Confirming, once again
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir
I love finding new words that speak to the optics of water. Ice has particularly spectacular variations dependent on a myriad of factors. I often photograph tiny sections of ice using my macro lens and the resulting variations are endless. Temperatures—how fast it freezes—wind, waves, thicknesses, particulates in the water can all affect the end result.
Birefringence is double refracting. Collins dictionary defines it as the splitting of a light ray, generally by a crystal, into two components that travel at different velocities and are polarized at right angles to each other.
I’ve wondered about the curious wild colors that my camera captures in these intimate, often abstract, landscapes.
After a slow start to winter, it has struck with a vengeance and with temperatures reaching -39 degrees Fahrenheit, I should have plenty of opportunities to photograph more ice.
Optics! They bring the color to winter.
Nature creates the most intricate artwork, and the only way to capture and preserve it is with photography. For me, it’s (almost always) about the water, and winter, by far, creates some of the most breath-taking sculptures using that element. They’re fleeting and transient—with the slightest breeze or temperature fluctuation capable of obliterating them.
The image above is one of soft rime. Earlier that morning, shining a flashlight ahead of me, I watched with interest as freezing fog streamed through the beam of light. Droplets like this, under the right conditions, can freeze upon contact with surfaces at subzero temperatures creating opaque structures of brittle, interlocking ice crystals.
On any other morning, this was a clump of horsehair snagged in a barbed wire fence. But on this particular day, it became an ornate, delicate thing of beauty.
Tearing the last page off a calendar is such a great time for reflecting. This year we had an abundance of things to be grateful for proving once again, it’s not things that make a year good or bad, it’s who you go through those things with that makes the difference.
Sunrise won’t arrive for a few hours yet, but as I sit writing, my husband has made coffee and dropped a steaming cup off to me (accompanied by a chocolate-covered coffee bean). The day is very special to me. The man who brought me coffee proposed to me on New Year’s Day after reciting by memory, one of my favorite poems, ee cummings, i carry your heart with me (i carry it in). Outside, a light snow is falling over our desperately dry land and the air has a winter feel to it.
Our dog is snoring, not yet recovered from a day-long hike. We’ve had many great hikes this year and right now, in the garage drying, is a casting we made of a cougar track, spotted on our latest adventure. It joins track castings of a black bear and a grizzly.
This year I captured a couple from my bucket list of shots—light pillars and a lunar halo/aurora combination. We discovered a new favorite place that all three of us enjoy. Don’t ask…I can’t tell you! Thanks to another friend, I made a connection with a horse who needed a little extra companionship. It’s been a highlight of my year.
And here we are in 2024. I am grateful for the love and friendship of my husband, family, and friends (new and old). I wish you all the best in the new year, we could not have done it without you!
And for those who have asked, yes, this was the year that an albatross house went by the wayside thanks to the dedication of one tenacious woman. I’d name her but I suspect she wants to forget the entire experience, and I wouldn’t blame her. I wish her an especially Happy New Year!
it's (almost always) about the water... 