It snowed a bit last night, or was it the night before? One snowfall runs into the next and it’s hard to remember as the days and weeks go by. I get tired of the snow, but I never tire of it’s beauty. How can something that causes so much trouble and pain be so beautiful? It is a paradox.

It’s also not easy to photograph, especially at night. I don’t know what drew me outside that night, a week or so ago when we had a big storm. It was a bit eerie. Dark but not dark, a distant haze made everything a similar tone. I thought the snow had stopped but there was a barely noticeable partially frozen mist with an occasional flake here and there. The street lights cast a yellow glow.

I decided to shoot at a high ISO, maybe 3200. It made the sky look lighter than it was, but it was a strange not totally dark sky anyway. After all we were in the middle of a storm cloud, so you could say that there was no sky, only cloud coverage.

I decided to change the ISO and give the flash a try. I wanted to capture some close ups of the branches.

It was a very fluffy snow, so although they look heavily burdened, they are not. Notice how the flash brought out the night, but it was not really that dark outside. I could not capture the reality of it. I often find it’s hard to capture the true beauty of snow.