Photographing Icy Branches

Last night I remembered some wintry pictures that I took last January. I did not post them at the time because they were inside a film camera and not developed until Spring. Then I had the roll scanned and put on CD at Walmart but the images were out of season so I stuck the CD in a drawer.

Now it's winter again and icy cold, so the pictures seem appropriate to share. I got the CD out last night and brightened the images a bit (after all, these were cheap scans) before I went to bed. Tonight I got ready to post them and I checked to see what day I took them. It was exactly a year ago: January 7, 2009.

I took these pictures in Winchester, Virginia. Normally I would not have made the one-hour drive there on an icy day, but I had a medical test scheduled that I did not want to postpone. (See my post for that day if you're curious.)

The test took all morning and I was anxious to get some lunch, but from the parking lot I could see that the trees were covered with glistening ice. There are a couple of landscaped duck ponds at the entrance to the hospital complex, and I felt that they were worth photographing even though a misty cold rain was still drizzling down.

Normally I carry a camera when I drive through the Shenandoah Valley because I often see a pretty landscape. But on this particular day I had left the house before daylight with cold rain falling, and I was worried about icy roads and staying alert, rather than photo ops. However, I did have a disposable camera in a compartment of my snack bag, stashed there for times like this.

I only used about half the roll of film before retreating to the warmth of my car, where I stuck the camera back in its compartment and forgot about it, concerned with finding lunch and making it back to Woodstock for a physical therapy appointment. Eventually I finished off the film in May and got it processed.  I also purchased another cheap disposable camera and put it in the snack bag.