We enjoyed several days with interesting sunlighting.  Here are some examples:

Snowballs rolling down the hill …

Oft-photographed tortured white pine …

Oft-photographed Twin Rivers is starting to freeze over on February 7th …

Notice how those shadows guide your vision …

Big Lake …

Beginnings of a sun pillar just north of Big Lake on Hwy 529  at 5:11 PM …

A minute later clouds cover the Sun, giving a Tom Thomson effect to that dead Jack Pine.

At 5:20 PM the sun pillar had re-appeared …

5:28 view from the road into Byng Inlet with a light snow flurry passing through the area.

Mixture of lighting:  natural sunlight, incandescent, LEDs…

This requires double clicking or spreading to see the structure in the snow and in the water …

Afternoon shadows helps to bring out texture …

Twin Rivers is almost frozen over on February 10th ..

Compare the shadow guidance in the following image (Feb 10th 5:09 PM) with the guidance in the earlier (Feb 7th, 5:04 PM) one up the page.

(Yes, I waited for a few minutes until the dead tree and shrubs in the foreground were illuminated.    Did it work?)

Some more snow textures …

Animal tracks add interesting stories to many photos  ….

The gnarled White Pine again.   This time with tracks.

The blog is almost up to date (Today is Feb 22nd).  Hopefully we’ll get it up to date in a few days.

We saw lots of variety at the end of January, including these scenes …

Skerryvore Community Road, shadows, tracks and patterns ..

Ice laden trees on Hwy 529 …

Ice encapsulated twigs …

Including birch catkins …

Ruffed grouse is not happy with its food being in a freezer…

sparkles in the ice ….

Black labrador assumes the position whilst guarding the car …

Snow at Secord Rapids …

Snow on Burwash Road ….

Time for a new month.  No doubt that February will bring some more winter scenes.

We looked at the effects of the ice storms through the FZ 1000 and the GH4 with the Leica 100-400 mm lens in the neighbourhood of Britt and up at Meshaw Falls on the French River.   Some examples:

Still River from Legion Lane.

Mouth of Still River with Byng Inlet in background…

Textures …. ( Click on some of these close-ups to see the beauty of ice sculpturing.  Use your back button in your browser to return to the blog.)

Byng Inlet

“Weeping” White Pine …

Shadows …

Birch under ice …

Highway 507 icy White Pine …

Peek-a-boo Sun …

Upstream Meshaw Falls …

Downstream …

Ice prison …

Goldenrod in ice against snow …

More textures ….

A hibernaculum for some sort of insect, made out of a rolled alder leaf….

A pair of Hooded Mergansers diving for minnows at the base of Meshaw Falls …

The ice lasted a few days so we had lots of opportunity to examine its effects.

These pictures were made using the long telephoto lens, usually from less that 10 m away, so you can see the detail in the little sculptures, especially if you enlarge them (by clicking on the image at least once).   The resulting textures are interesting.

January gave some very variable weather, ranging from morning sun pillars to snowstorms to ice storms.

Morning sun pillars …

South side of Byng Inlet as seen in the snow from Dave and Maureen’s place …

Peek-a-boo…

Boucher quarry road …

A day later, warmer with some freezing rain  …

Fixing the cause of the inevitable power outage…

Icicles …

Lots of icicles … (worth clicking on to get up close.  Use the “back” button on your browser to return.)

Up close …

Sleeting on ice covered Big (Gereaux) Lake.

Drooping White Pine boughs …

Those needles will probably fall when the ice sublimates/melts …

Staghorn Sumac fruit …

twigs …

ice!!!

The wind has come up …

Ice covered tamaracks (and white pine and spruce in the background).

Still River as seen from Riverside Drive….

Not nice for driving and operating power equipment … but very nice to see and photograph!

We had a few days of comparatively warm and humid air during the daytimes.  This led to some interesting sights….

The very cold several days prior had “cold-soaked” the rocks to temperatures in the low -20ºC.  When the warmer weather arrived moisture in the air condensed on the cold rocks in the cuts lining the roads.

Here is an example, including the remains of a drill hole after blasting.

Hwy 529A was a good place to find frost flowers that accumulated overnight as moisture from the ditches would saturate the air and freeze to form the nice “flowers”….  (which can be seen up close, by clicking on the images a couple of times.  Use the back button on your browser to return.)

Catenary chain and its shadow, in sparkling snow.

Early afternoon shadows under a blue sky …

Morning sky casting a different light on the snow resting on Byng Inlet:

Delicate light …

Cascade of ice on the rocks across from Wright’s Marina…

Icicles that formed during a breeze …

More delicate snow and frostflower scenes…

Looks like Reddy Fox went up the creek for a short excursion …

This winter has been very variable, very cold, warm spells, heavy snow —- all testing the photographer’s will to get out in it.   But the rewards are some very different images from the more common scenes that I see.  Such as this, the last one to end this post: