Fresh Snow

Quote of the day:

“All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate…
Snow…unceasing snow”
― Hashin, Japanese Haiku

Plume of snow from neighbor blowing snow off driveway

Fresh snow fell silently during the night. When I awoke this morning and looked out the world looked new again with the fresh blanket of snow.

I challenged myself to make photos from inside the house using only my Tamron 60 mm F/2 Macro lens. I often use limitations like this to cause me to push through habitual ways of working and to see differently. If I feel like I’m in a rut or without inspiration, creating limits often pushes me to see and work in new ways. This morning, it was just me wondering what it would be like to limit myself to one fixed lens for landscape-like shots. That meant no zooming in close, no going out wide for shots.

It was actually fun limiting myself this way, especially since I also specified making photos from inside my house. I couldn’t even use my feet to go closer. Everything I saw was shot within this single focal length.

I discovered that my 60mm lens is great for story-telling and expressing what I feel as I gaze on all this fresh clean beauty.

The long blue shadows in the back yard intrigued me. The plume of snow from our neighbor’s snow blower, new snow on top of old tracks in the snow, snow covered bushes, golden morning light on snow covered trees—all spoke to me of beauty, silence, grace, endurance.

Here are a few of my fresh snow photos…