Snow is quite unusual in this part of Georgia, so it seems worthwhile to devote a post to documenting this past Tuesday’s snowstorm, from the perspective of my daily journey down Piney Woods Church Road. When I walked the road late Tuesday afternoon, the snow was still falling, and there were no tracks — vehicular or otherwise — on the roadway. From Rico Road to Hutcheson Ferry Road, it was covered over with a pure white veil.
On the advice of a neighbor, I finally decided it was time to experience dawn along Piney Woods Church Road. I knew it would not offer prospects as spectacular as sunset, because the eastern side of the road is almost entirely wooded. Still, I had high hopes for a grove of pines to be illuminated briefly (though this never happened). So I dutifully made my way there (across a neighbor’s horse pasture, this being the fastest route) before 8 am, a few minutes past sunrise. For an hour, I wandered the Hutcheson Ferry end of the road, photographing the rural landscape in the morning light. I noticed a few things about that golden hour as the sun rose slowly in the sky: first, that there was a stillness to the air; second, that it was rather cold; and third, that I live near the world’s busiest airport, as evidenced by a series of airplanes crossing the sky. All three of these realizations are contained, to some extent, within the photograph below. After nearly an hour of waiting and watching (toes and fingers growing numb), I saw my neighbor at the head of his driveway. He wandered over, mug of steaming coffee in hand, to politely inquire if I was aware that it was currently eight degrees Fahrenheit, according to his outdoor thermometer. Suddenly I felt much, much colder. My next sunrise may be a few months away yet.
Today remained cold, and our car remained garaged. In the late afternoon, I set out to explore the local landscape, in search of snowy scenes to photograph — an opportunity that comes to Piedmont Georgia once every few years at most. My tranquil surroundings felt so far removed from all the scenes of highway gridlock around Atlanta last night and today, with drivers stuck in their cars for tens of hours, struggling to get home. I was already home, and at home, in the comfortable countryside of Piney Woods Church Road. This photograph captures the mood well — a pastoral scene with winter trees and fields, with a horse peacefully feeding on hay in the foreground.
Snow is a great transformer of landscape. Pick the most mundane scene imaginable, add a layer of freshly-fallen snow, and the result can border on magical. I set out this afternoon into a steady snowfall, looking for images of trees and animals enduring the elements — pines catching snow on their needles, cows hunkered down in the pasture. Ultimately, though, my favorite photograph of the lot is probably this one: wild onion grass (the kind that occupies much of my front yard every spring) in the snow. The photograph was an afterthought, really — practically the last one I took, just before rounding the corner onto Rico Road and heading home.
This time of year in Georgia, unless it snows (which may happen tomorrow!), the landscape takes on a dull, sere, gray-brown appearance. The eye yearns for splashes of color. Some of the plants oblige with still-green leaves, such as water oaks and greenbriers. For yellows, there are the pine warblers, when one happens to catch a glimpse of one. For purples and reds, there is always the possibility of another sunset. For blues, there is the sky. And, occasionally, there are bluebirds.
This is an accidental photograph; I am not a wildlife photographer. Still, this time of year there is so little changing along Piney Woods Church Road (apart from the weather, that is), that I eagerly photograph anything that moves on wings or feet. Whenever I see a bird perch on a fence (which usually happens when the plus four macro is screwed onto my camera lens, preventing me from zooming until I remove it) I quickly try to take a photo, without really thinking about composition or light or anything but whether or not the bird will fly before I zoom, focus, and snap the shutter. Usually, I get but one image, and rarely two. It is as if the birds know I am trying to photograph them, and dash away. That happened today — I saw a distant bird alight on a barbed wire fence, I zoomed in, took the photo, and the bird flew off. I thought nothing more of it until I returned home, reviewed the photographs on Picasa 3, and discovered my subject was a lone bluebird, against a nearly monochromatic background. Beautiful.
At last a mild(er) afternoon arrived, with temperatures reaching into the lower 50s. What I first hoped would be a mostly sunny visit to Piney Woods Church Road turned quickly into a mostly cloudy one. I couldn’t get enthused about macro work — I kept looking upward for the few places where gray and white clouds thinned to deep blue. The old pecan trees’ bare branches offer such wonderful skeletal forms, inviting not one or two, but a series of images. Everywhere I looked, I discovered new possible compositions in the dynamic of trees and sky.
Finally, an evening that was both warm enough and cloudy enough to offer the possibility of interesting sunset photography. I set out an hour early, taking a few desultory photographs here and there, then stopping to visit neighbors to chat for a few minutes, watching the sun sinking in the sky through their living room window out of the corner of my eye. My attention was captured by an odd snag on a pasture ridge. The most difficult part of the process for me today was not taking the picture (my hands never even went numb — what a delight) or even processing it (Picasa 3 offers pleasantly few choices compared to Photoshop or Lightroom). The problem this time was figuring out a title for the blog post. Everything I could come up with the word “sunset” in it sounded like either a cookie-cutter housing development or a New Age instrumental song title. Not that I have anything against them — New Age instrumentals, that is — but nothing felt right for the image. Finally, I abandoned the idea of sunset, and settled on the fact that it is also an “end of day” picture. There is something foreboding, almost apocalyptic, in it — I am haunted by the image of that strange snag. I wonder what happened to the tree it once was, and why it still stands there, alone against the sky.
Today offered me yet another in a string of cold mornings, and coming home from errands I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road, my camera with plus ten macro in hand. I explored worlds contained in leaves, mosses, and bark from a long-dead pine tree. My choice from the day’s ramblings is this image of the leaflets of a Christmas fern, verdant green in a stark brown and gray Georgia winter landscape.
Another shot of arctic air arrived yesterday, and this morning it was twenty-five degrees, with a light breeze. Bare hands became partially numb after just four or five photographs. It was a day for admiring Mark Hirsch, who photographed an old burr oak tree in a pasture every day of the year, including on days that were bitterly cold by Wisconsin standards, not Georgia ones. Adapting to the cold, I have identified a few images I have been taking practically every day, and for the next few days I will focus on each one of them in turn. Today, I drove to the midway point of Piney Woods Church Road, to photograph some old pecan trees, some of which actually appear on an aerial photograph of the area back in 1938,making them probably 100 years or more in age. The most grizzled veteran stands in one of the pastures, and merits its own photograph, which I will take sometime soon. For today, though, I offer the image of bare tree branches, reaching for the sky.
I raced and approaching front (with its impending clouds, colder temperatures, and strong winds), getting out to Piney Woods Church Road while the skies were still clear. Morning sunshine offered marvelous backlighting for macro photographs of oak leaves, mosses and fern fronds. The veins on this water oak leaf (Quecus nigra) form a kind of botanical map, reminiscent of medieval strip maps showing paths of pilgrimage (you can view an example of one here). What kind of journey does this leaf offer us? What holy lands does it reveal?
