Blue and Cold

In places where winters are mild enough to engage in regular outdoor activities, seasonal weariness sets in around February, even for those of us who proudly consider ourselves People of the North. 

I think I've hit that point...today. Yes, today, at that very moment when strong winds began to punctuate the already refreshing -30C weather, unfurling oversized basset ears into imperial banners.

The upside to craving summer, or at least, spring?

Warming up with a touch of red wine. 

Dwarfed by the Landscape

"I used to swim here?" were the first words that ran through my mind when I briefly stopped by the lake. Not only was the water iced and snowed over for as far as the eye could see, but there were also several brave souls, both human and canine, far away from the beach skiing over what were once deep and, at times, turbulent glacial waters.

Last February, I went dog-sledding on a different lake in this area. Even though I felt uncertain about being on ice that late in the winter, I trusted the guide.

Perhaps it's my Russianness, but I often display excessive obedience in the face of authority: there were no signs here, so I felt like I was breaking the law just walking around!  

The basset felt otherwise:

He tracked his canine friends (or future enemies!):

And generally seemed quite triumphant. Whereas I was awe-stricken by how tiny he appeared against the mountains covered over by the brooding winter clouds, he was just happy not to be thrown into the lake by his at-times crazy water-loving human mom (i.e., yours truly).

Let There Be Color

Many Moons ago, when I was a naive and haughty (now I'm cynical and haughty) undergraduate university student, 35 mm photography was one of my Fine Arts majors.

Naturally, we started our studies with black and white, everything from setting up a photoshoot to developing film and printing images in the dark room. To me, black and white seemed perfect. After all, not only was I haughty, but I was also an underground metal girl, wearing black leather, offensive black band t-shirts, and black knee-high boots. I even tinted my already dark hair to look even darker.

My heart is still blackened! Just kidding.

And so I photographed trees that looked like the Darkthrone logo and all kinds of artistically blurry gloom and doom.

And then...

Love strikes you when you least expect it.

This is exactly what happened with the introduction of 35 mm color photography, as my studies progressed.

Color balancing in the dark room took around an hour for each color photograph. Color photo paper was expensive, to boot, and I cringed every time I had to expose and print another test when the CMY balance wasn't quite right.

Most expensive of all was the tungsten-balanced film for indoor photography. I remember it being around 10 dollars a roll at that time. That's a lot for student if you consider that every photoshoot involved 2-3 rolls to get that perfect image. But this also made it more exciting: walking into a store, requesting several rolls of that special film, not the regular kind that made human skin look too yellow under indoor lights, and envisioning oneself as a total professional.

It certainly contributed to my feeling haughty in one vicious circle of haughtiness! 

Nowadays, I still prefer color in digital photography, even though much of the imagery toward which I gravitate is dark in atmosphere and suitable for black and white. And my experience with 35 mm is, perhaps, one of the reasons why I want my own photographs to project the colors found in Nature as closely as possible.

Even when they seem impossible.

Winter Morning

If you pay attention to my work, you have probably seen dozens of sunset images by now and few, if any, sunrises. That is, of course, because I'm a night owl, and over the years, despite major life changes with school and work, I've managed to maintain a fairly similar schedule. 

Simply put, in the morning I think that the world is surely coming to an end, daily, whereas at night I feel like signing (I can't sing). 

A few weeks ago, I spent a bit of time on the mountain: in fact, this was the Catholic Christmas Eve. Something got me up early that morning—even my dog was still asleep. As I walked past a window, I noticed a quiet lilac world with a waning Moon at the center.

If there were any sleep left in me before that point, considering the 3 am bedtime, it was gone.

It is never possible to transmit the full experience (even if the aesthetic elements are there, the sound and scent are not). Yet by documenting if not a 360-, then a 270-degree view with selected detail, this is as close to giving you the sense of what it was like as one could possibly get.

This experience ended up being one of the only instances when I did not feel the impending morning Apocalypse.

Peace.

This Week in Mobile

This week in smartphone photography, it felt like exactly 3.5 degrees above absolute zero in "Twin Peaks" on the weekend (much like the rest of the continent, mind you). Naturally, this aspiring Russian Barbarian picked up the new cross-country skis and headed into the mountains for a rather, how shall we say, refreshing pre-sunset hour of continuing to re-learn this delightfully endurance-oriented sport.

Evidently, the scenery--and the overly excited canine friends--was distracting enough. I've got bruises and mobile photos to prove it!

Next time, you should come out, too, if only to laugh at my learning mishaps.

Night

Sometimes, I feel like I only truly live at night. 

Normally, I recall this in the context of some sort of intellectual labor, whether translation or essay writing. It is as if my mind suddenly opens up, and the words just flow. Tonight, however, this reminder came in a physical way, as I cruised through my mile-long front crawl swim (and then some) without the need to stop.

By then, still a fragile crescent set amidst the purple clouds, the barely-there Moon in Capricorn had already traveled through most of the Sky, reclining further and further into incoming Darkness as if to go to sleep, while turning more and more yellow.

This evening, it was I that was the night owl, and the Moon, paradoxically--a lark.

Yes, that aspen was watching.