Firgure 1 – Backing out of the driveway – First snow December 29, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

As many of you know in December this winter the weather has been remarkably warm in Boston. I kept hoping that we could achieve a record breaking December with no snow. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be, and on December 29 we had our first snowfall, which ended up as a slushy mess on the driveway.

I was pondering just how I might depict this less than lovely first coat. My wife had gone out on an errand, and when I saw the tracks of her tires where she had backed out of the driveway, it struck me that I had a novel catch on the theme.  I was excited enough by the potential image that I overcame indolence and not only changed to a wide angle zoom, but I also struggled to remove the screen from the window.

I am pretty happy with the end result. It is an abstract, of course, that reminds me of the parallel paths of a conductor’s baton. Then too, for those of us that drive in this mess, it is symbolic of the not so happy relationship between cars and snow.

At a technical level, I was surprised that the image did not, as most snow scenes do, require exposure compensation. In the case of snow this is a step or so over exposure, but not here! The image demanded pure black and white, that is no toning

Canon T2i with EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens at 24 mm IS on, ISO 200 Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/320th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.