Sterling Lake Snowstorm
Many of my photographs are “planned” images. That is, I have seen a location previously, and have planned to re-visit it when I think the optimal conditions will exist for photographing the scene. Elements that factor into this include time of day, season, and weather conditions. Weather being fickle, this means that many times I show up and the conditions just don’t work out as planned.
Other photographs are “found” images. That means I just get lucky and stumble upon a scene when the conditions just happen to be good for photographing the scene. Ansel Adams claimed that most of his photographs were “found” images. At first glance, this seems to me to be an odd way to go about making photographs – basically relying on serendipity to be in the right place at the right time for the right subject. But giving it more thought, it actually makes a lot of sense. One of the philosophies of photography that I follow is “look for the light, then find your subject matter”. While I usually visit a location with a specific subject in mind, once I am on site I usually disregard the subject matter and focus on what the light is doing. This also supports the philosophy of “A boring subject in great light usually yields a much more compelling photograph than a great subject in boring light”. So I usually plan a photography trip with a specific subject in mind. I go to the site based on expectations that the right conditions will occur. But once I am on site, it frequently happens that I find a different subject because the light is happening in a way that makes a less attractive subject a better image than the photograph that I had anticipated making.
This image of Sterling Lake is a “found” image. On a previous hike in this area I had found a pine tree that a beaver had felled. The tooth sharpened stump was just above a large boulder that sloped steeply down to the edge of Sterling Lake. The pine tree had fallen down on to the ice covered lake. It is unusual for a beaver to take down a pine tree unless it is close to its dam or lodge. Beavers generally prefer deciduous trees like birch and willow for food in winter. I thought that returning during or just after a snowstorm would make for an interesting photo of the gnawed stump, and snow covered boulder and pine tree.
So it happened that we had a light snowstorm happening on a weekend day where I could hike in to the downed tree. Unfortunately the temperature was hovering right around 32 degrees and the snow was not accumulating on the boulder and tree. I took a few obligatory shots (which I knew would not be usable; but I hate leaving empty handed), and decided to hike back around the lake to see if I could find anything else interesting to photograph.
This image appeared at the end of a small cove. I was really drawn to the clean composition of the 2 sections of open water and rocks, with the background obscured by the falling light snow. Lens choice was easy because evergreen tree branches intruded from both sides of the cove. Using a wider angle lens would have meant cluttering the image with the distracting tree branches. Using a longer lens would have meant losing some of the interesting detail of the ice patterns around the open water. I was standing on the edge of the lake and had no option to back up because of trees lining the shore where I stood. And the ice was not thick enough to support my weight. My biggest compositional decision was moving left and right along the shore to get the best angle at the designs of the ice and open water in relationship to the complementary ridge-lines of the mountains in the distance. I’m not one to adhere strictly to the “rule of thirds” but in this case I felt that putting the prominent line separating the far shore and mountains about 2/3 s up from the bottom of the frame yielded the best balance for the photo.
It is always enjoyable for me to try to find isolated subjects from within the entire landscape. It is a bit like playing “Where’s Waldo” but you don’t know in advance what Waldo looks like. Photography is very much an art of subtraction (different from other artists who generally start with a blank canvas and create their art by adding information). Photographers start with the entire scene around them and subtract information in order to distill the scene down to a composition that contains only the information that tells the story that they want to tell. In this case, the image is fairly abstract, being more about tones and shapes than ice, rocks, and mountains.
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