CalArti

Yesterday I headed off to the Allegan Forest for the first time in several weeks. I had visited the forest in early winter, and again during some the coldest days of late January. But yesterday was the first really warm day we’ve had for some time, so I was eager to head out and see how the forest looked.

Allegan is closer to the lake than Kalamazoo, and so it gets a lot more snow. Lake effect snow. And as I headed down the main dirt roads, time and time again I saw some of my favorite two track roads, all too buried in snow to be passable. At least in my Subaru.

Finally I made my way to 121st street – definitely not a two track, and definitely a well traveled road. But still a seasonal road, not plowed or cleared of snow in the winter.

There were a lot of vehicle tracks leading down 121st street, and so I decided to head in. After a couple dozen yards I realized that the slushy melting snow under the wheels was not working. I decided to back out – and carefully started to back up towards the main road.

It only took a second to slide off the packed down tire tracks and slip into the deep, slushy snow. The car stopped, the wheels spun, and for all my rocking forward and back, I was stuck for good.

So there I was. I called home, my wife looked up a wrecker service in Allegan on the internet, I called them and waited for the truck to come. In the pre-cellphone days I would of had to walk the mile or so to the ranger station (whcih is often empty) or flagged down a passing motorist (who are rather scarce out in the woods.)

I had set aside the day to try to scrounge out some photos – so, while I was waiting I figured I may as well take a few shots.

Stuck in the woods under blue skies with the sun shining through the trees. The obvious landscapes shots were wanting. I started to think about Harry Callahan and his shots of grass stalks in the snow. Instead of grass stalks in the snow, I was captivated with the shadows of small saplings and tree branches – really twigs – on the snow. And so I spent half and hour shooting shadows in the snow. I probably wouldn’t of done it if I hadn’t gotten stuck there, but I’m glad I did. No masterpieces, no compelling photos – but an interesting exercise, maybe something worth pursuing in the future.

When the wrecker came we tried digging the car out of the snow with shovels. I don't think the truck operator wanted to venture too far back on the side road.

It didn’t work. The slushy snow was compacted into ice half a foot down – and it was on that ice that I was just spinning my wheels.

So we hooked my car up to the truck with a long rope and with one small tug it wound up back on the packed down snow – the path I was originally trying to follow. A minute or two in reverse and I was back on the plowed road, $75 poorer but better for the time spent among the shadows.

From there I decided to head to safer ground, so I drove over to South Haven the check out the lighthouse. A few weeks ago I had been there in a howling snow squall, but today all was calm. It was also uncannily warm, as I walked out onto the pier in shirt sleeves, the ice on the pier melted or melting.

The lighthouse was still fringed with icicles – but with predicted highs up around 60 F in the next few days, these won’t last.

As usual, a steady stream of photographers was snapping away at the lighthouse. I always enjoy my visits to the lake - but lihthouses are sort of a subject matter of last resort. I probably would have done better to have stuck with the shadows and snow, whether stuck in the snow or not.

Here it is, mid March, and the winter is fading fast. I once shot a honey bee in a crocus bloom on the 19th of March. This year the news is that the honey bees have suffered a drastic die-off over the winter, so maybe no bees this year. But something will come along. A lot of snow has to melt – but things should be picking up in the weeks ahead.

More shadows and snow can be found in the Image Stream.

Winter arrived with a vengeance at the end of January, and the unusually mild weather was swept away in a white blur of blowing snow. Unfortunately, the snow has not been suitable for snowflake photography – it has come down as a fine powder, broken up with no distinct crystal structures of any kind.

But it has snowed. In fact, it has snowed a lot. Last weekend as the cold front rolled in the lake effect engine turned on. A few feet of snow have fallen on Kalamazoo, much more has fallen along the lakeshore.

So, instead of photographing snow crystals I decided to go for landscapes showing the whiteout conditions – snowcapes, if you will.

The snow first arrived late in the day on Saturday, January 27. I taught a winter photography workshop at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute that day. We already had a few inches of snow on the ground, but the serious cold front was just starting to move in, and the heavy white out snow conditions just got started that day. While driving home after the class, I stopped at Walled Lake to snap a few shots of the whiteout conditions using the Pentax K10D

Heavy snow was the rule for the ensuing week, and on Friday I headed out to the Allegan Forest, just to keep in touch with some of my favorite places.

Allegan is much closer to the lake than Kalamazoo, and the forest was covered with several feet of snow. The snow was too deep for me to venture down any of the two-tracks in my Subaru, so I pulled over onto the shoulder in a few places and hiked back into the woods in the deep snow.

I visited a field that is one of my staples in the summer – north of the Kalamazoo river, it’s a great place for butterflies, dragonflies, and other insects. The winter shot certainly contrasts with the hot, hazy photo I took of the same scene last summer.
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Yesterday (Feb 9, 2007) I decided to head out to South haven to see what the lighthouse looked like in the snow.

I have to admit – I’ve cooled to lighthouse photography. I make only a few trips a year out to the lakeshore, where in the past I regularly went hit the nearby lighthouses, from St. Joseph up to Grand Haven.

Early in the week, the temperatures were downright frigid – with a –10 Fahrenheit (that’s -23 Celsius for everyone outside of the US). By Friday the temperatures have moderated, to a relatively balmy 18 (-8 C). I went to the lighthouse mostly because I couldn’t think of a better place to go.

It wasn’t snowing in Kalamazoo, but as I got to the lakeshore (30 miles away) the snow was heavy. I walked out onto the pier to get close to the lighthouse – walking on glare ice covered with 5 inches of light and fluffy snow. The water just at the point of freezing up solidly, lots of broken slabs of ice with little spaces of open water between them.

The shot of the South Haven Lighthouse works well enough – I would have preferred to be a yard or two to the right of where I shot it, but that would have put me right at the edge of the pier, and too close to the water for comfort.

Tonight is clear, with temps already back into the single digits. Maybe we’ll get some snow yet that will be good for snow flake photos. But, if not, maybe there will be a few more chances for snowscapes.

A few other shots are in the Image Stream.