winter

Colonial Beach in Winter /  by Todd Henson

A little snow remained at the Colonial Beach Municipal Pier

In mid-January my father and I went for a drive and found ourselves at Colonial Beach in the Northern Neck of Virginia. This is a popular summer destination for some folks but isn’t very popular at all during the colder months of winter, which means I found it far more appealing in winter. Snow had fallen about a week before and though most of that had melted there were still some small amounts on the pier and beach.

Under the gazebo looking out at the pier

Snow and gulls on Colonial Beach pier

Over to the left was what I called cormorant pier for all the cormorants perched along the length

It was a cold day but not frigid. And there were hardly any people about, though we encountered many gulls and cormorants as you can see in the photos. The weather forecast had called for a small chance of rain in some areas of Virginia, and though we didn’t run into any it did result in some nice overcast conditions and clouds with a bit of character. Overall I found it a very calm, quiet and beautiful day and I’m glad we decided to pay the beach a visit.

Colonial Beach Municipal Pier and the Potomac River

A final look at winter at Colonial Beach

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Tree on a Hill /  by Todd Henson

A Sequence of Snowscapes /  by Todd Henson

I’ve always been fascinated by a certain type of landscape photograph, one whose subject is simple enough and without anything recognizable that would provide a reference, such that you can’t immediately tell if what you’re seeing is something far away or very close up. Perhaps you’ve seen some of these? Examples are photographs of sand dunes viewed from planes flying overhead.

Here I present another set of examples, this time of snow and the ridges and patterns shaped by the wind. But in this case each of these photos are closeups. Not macro, but a small area of space, where I leaned over the snow and photographed from an angle to let the mid-afternoon sunlight create the shadows that accent the patterns.

Click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

I spent several minutes exploring this area, right at a corner along a road on Blandy Experimental Farm. I bent over at different angles, got lower, higher, tried tilting the camera this way and that. At one point my focus attracted the attention of someone who works at the location. We had a nice conversation about the location and photography before I went back to creating images.

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Sign up to receive periodic emails with updates and thoughts. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you. And please consider purchasing artwork or products from my online store, and using my affiliate links in the sidebar to the right when shopping online.

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