A Little Chaos: Blizzard Orbs

There is a photo of us when we were kids, building a snowman in the yard, and there are these little orb-like snow balls in the photo from the flash firing into the falling snow. I love that photo.

We were visiting my mom and dad to celebrate my mom’s birthday last weekend and the photo came to mind as we watched the snow and wind whip around outside as the sun was going down.

I remembered I had my little flash in my camera bag and thought it might be fun to go experiment in the snow. First, I had to convince myself that I was going to have more fun in a blizzard than sitting in a nice warm chair by the fire. After some back and forth in my head, I finally bundled up and set out into the night.

My parents live out in the woods and have a few neighbors, but it’s generally pretty dark there aside from lights coming from their house and the neighbors across the road. The little flash I brought only has manual controls and my hands were freezing, so I clumsily adjusted the power while fidgeting with the dials on my camera to try and find a combination of settings that worked. Once I got a feel for what was working, fingers now numb and wishing I had brought gloves, I got to work and got a handful of shots I liked.

This is my favorite kind of photography/creativity/whatever-you-want-to-call-it: having an idea and going for it as soon as possible… not sitting around trying to figure out every aspect of it, not planning for it, not beating the life out of it before you give it a chance to happen… just running with it and letting a little chaos be part of the process. I guess I like to be surprised when I’m making stuff.

Finally, my little dude saw my newsletter the other day and was asking about it. He thought it was pretty cool and asked if I would include his painting in the next edition. I told him it would fit nicely and that I would be honored if he would let me include it, and so here it is! Thanks for looking!