On the day/night of the full moon we  had brilliant clear skies giving lots of light to the train crews clearing the derailment of 4 northbound CNR railcars at the Hwy 529 crossing near the Magnetawan FN Reserve.  The highway was closed in the early morning of Jan 22 and reopened in the evening.  Here is the last (empty tank) car being hooked to a loco for removal southwards on Jan 23.

During the day I made a few photos illustrating the sun reflecting off of the flat snow crystals.

and up close:

You  can see the facets and fine structure by clicking on the above images.

That evening I experimented with taking images of snow sparkles under a full moon.  All hand held, usually a second, exposures from the comfort of my car:

If you click on any of the four above images you’ll see the jiggle in the sparkles, the noise in the dark areas, the lens flare and the orange cast made by the car’s clearance lights.  It was quite a chilly night (-20ºC) so I didn’t get the tripod out.  If we get fresh snow and a clear night near Feb 22, I’ll try again using a tripod, to get exposures around 8 seconds or so.  That will fix up the jiggle and improve the signal/noise in those shadow areas.   In fact I just realized that a night or two ahead or after full moon, will probably be the best time to try.  If you are interesting in the camera set-up, there is a technical discussion on DPR.   An interesting challenge!

Examples of some interesting clouds giving unusual photo opportunities:

Here is a Bald Eagle that eyed me from behind a screen of Aspen branches:

I don’t usually see Bald Eagles in mid-winter.  Maybe we’ll continue to get mild weather.

We had some interesting sunlight illuminating snowy scenes lately.  Some examples:

Midday light:

As the afternoon progressed the light had an orange tint …

Probably because of the reflection off of the orange coloured clouds:

… giving  an interesting glow to the quartering backlit landscape.

… with even more dramatic colouration when directly backlit:

(Yes, the above is worth clicking on a couple times to see the sparkling nature of the ice on those branches.  Use your brower “back” button to return to this blog.)

… ending up with a gentle reflection off of the snow:

…. or screened by this oft-photographed clump of tamaracks on Shebeshekong Road on the Shawanaga FN Reserve.

… and in the evening the scattering of moonlight by the ice particles in thin clouds provided this glimpse of a lunar corona:

It is always amazing, eh?