With temperatures starting to warm up, the snow is disappearing quickly so I have been trying to capture what I can before Winter fades. It was around twenty degrees this evening and the sun sets pretty quickly if you don’t have a spot already planned. The snow in the field behind me had multiple little drifts that were catching the sun on the edges so I grabbed my tripod, put the camera and lens on it and started out across the snow. You could walk ten feet and not break through, then the next ten every step went through. this seemed to alternate over and over until of course I was in a rush and when I expected to break through, instead I got the solid ice and immediately went down with my tripod mounted lens going straight into the snow. the lens hood is like 6 inches long and was filled solid with snow but it was primarily fluff so a quick cleaning of the hood and lens glass and all was well! this sunset was very nice but I think I counted at least twelve contrails at one point, so this must be a popular route. I wish the farm was a little more prominent but it is what it is!

I have driven past this local College Chapel several times thinking I want to try a shot sometime. Well with the frigid temperatures our area has endured the pond here was frozen nice and thick and despite wishing it were clear ice I can’t complain. I arrived early hoping to get a sunset shot but that fizzled out. Since I was warmly dressed I decided to plop down in the snow surrounding the pond and set up my tripod and sit and wait. I sat in the snow unfazed by the cold for at least a half hour and the only thing stopping me from leaving was I could just begin to see the room inside the chapel was lit. As it got progressively darker, obviously the light in the chapel started to record more nicely in the ice. I was not completely satisfied that the image I captured was nice enough and was debating heading home when all of a sudden all the lamp posts around the chapel lit up and all the streaks of yellow lit up the ice! I did return the next night and have a second view I will post soon.

This view of the Historic Ephrata Cloister includes the cemetery surrounded by the stone wall. The one thing I always remember about their sleeping habits is they used wooden blocks as pillows. Try that sometime!

This image was taken last evening and despite being nowhere near the temperatures we had this past weekend, it ranked right up there with the most excruciating pain my hands ever experienced. Yesterday was much milder through the day so I got a bit complacent when I went out to shoot the sunset. I got safely pulled off into a snow pile along the road and then hiked across this farm field with camera, 2 lenses and tripod. I had a very thin pair of gloves on and till I was finished it was close to an hour standing out in the cold. I kept prolonging it because I wanted the interior lights to show up and I was too lazy to walk to my truck for better gloves. When I got back in my vehicle my hands hurt so bad I just sat there rocking in my seat fighting the pain. It was only 25 degrees but as soon as the sun went down you could feel the cold settling in.

This barn has undergone a serious renovation and has quickly been added to my list of favorites. With the additional windows it strikes me as it might be available as an event space?

I started this morning by driving to this cemetery to try a sunrise shot. It was exactly 5 degrees here this morning at 6am but I was actually comfortable except a few times taking the gloves off to adjust settings. When I was leaving I noticed this scene as a potential shot for sunset tonight and this was the result of going back tonight. The small bench was a nice touch and I am happy I made the return trip!

It is currently 18 degrees here in Lancaster county with winds between 20 and 50 mph making wind chill -10. This set of Nutcracker figures seem to be guarding against the intrusion of mother nature going beyond the blue door. This small village is known as Stoudtburg Village and was originally built as a combination Home and business idea. I believe the original concept came about because the owner loved to travel to Europe so he modeled this to resemble that. It is a neat layout but you rarely see any businesses open so there is not much incentive to visit.

This is the very first place I worked as a teenager and the snowy area in the foreground was actually at the rear of the apartment we lived in when I was in Elementary school. When I look at this scene I am immediately transported back over 50 years to a time when myself and a few friends used to throw sweet Chestnuts at passing cars on the main road that is running between the building and the foreground snow. If you ever handled the thorny shell of sweet chestnuts they are no joke. I always heard them called horse chestnuts but a quick google search clearly shows sweet chestnuts as the prickly ones. I can’t even tell you the last time I saw these chestnut anywhere but I assume they are still around.

This is a home along a fairly busy road that always seems to grab my attention when driving by. They simply have a nice set of warm inviting string lights on the porch that just sends a message welcome home! I have seen them in every season but I finally decided to stop and ask if they would allow me to do a shot? I rang the bell and two large dogs came charging as if their dinner was waiting just outside the door. The owner came and calmed them down and said sure, go for it. I did struggle a bit on this one because the lights are so warm they turn the whole porch into one big yellow glow, so I tamed them down a bit. I shot a variety of ideas for this image, ranging from shining light out onto the snow from the porch to casting long shadows on the snow from the bushes, but in the end the simple glow onto the cold snow was the direction I took. OH and the owners were gracious enough to turn lights on to create that warm inviting feel. The title is in reference to me being invited in after standing in freezing temps for over an hour and immediately feeling that toasty warm feeling only a fireplace can give.

I shot this last night while kneeling in the snow in the middle of a farm field. I used an app called the Photographers Ephemeris which will show you were the sun, moon will rise and set. Due to user error I missed the moon rise location by a hundred yards, so I had to dash through the snow to get to the right alignment. A bonus was the farmers had lights on in the barns.

This Church has always struck me as one you might see in New England, not Pennsylvania. First impression might lead you to believe this in a rural setting but it is actually beside one of the busiest roads in the county. I was driving by when the late afternoon light was hitting it so I decided to shoot it.The road which I hide by staying low is actually about a third of the way up from the bottom where the dark and light strip runs. This was shot on Friday during rush hour and trust me when I say getting a clean no car 2 second exposure was an exercise in frustration. Of course to make things more exciting I actually went out on the road a few times to light the snow for some texture. I always felt the building on the left needed a steeple but I do not know the history of this church and wheather or not one might have been on years ago.

This past weekend we got a little over 13 inches of snow plus another inch or two of sleet. Temperatures are staying put right now hovering anywhere from almost zero to a balmy twenty. This storm was not the prettiest because it was very fluffy and did not cling to anything. This covered bridge was taken in the early morning when it was around 15 degrees and as you can see parts of the stream are already frozen. A possible 2nd nor’easter this coming weekend seems to be heavily favored at this point. Looks like its time for more bread and milk. We had one day where travel was iffy but to watch people stock up you would think we were going to be hunkered down for weeks!

This was another one of the bitter cold mornings we had last week. I saw the mist rising from the warm creek and the fence added a little bit of interest. For an image like this I will compose the shot while using a branch to block the sun and then ever so slowly lean in until I just barely catch the edge of the sun peeking through. Getting the full sun usually will just result in lens flare that degrades the contrast. Also, shooting on manual to get the overall exposure looking like you want it is critical.

I took this image last weekend as I was heading to do another shot. The farther I drove on the back roads, the more this low level fog seemed to be building in the small valleys in the farm fields. I had to make a snap decision which house I was going to ask to shoot from their yard and I picked a good one willing to let me have at it. This was like a half mile away and there was a lot of atmosphere between my camera and the farm. The intense backlit color was actually better when the sun was higher but that created so much flare I had to wait for the sun to subdue lower on the horizon. It is surprising how fast the sun goes down almost seemingly on fast forward. Tomorrow night we are set to see the arrival of 12-18 inches or more and I am hopeful to get out and get some shots. I am hoping to get my winch back on my jeep tomorrow which offers a bit of reassurance if I need to pull myself out or help someone stranded somewhere. the last time we got that much snow, a snow emergency was declared and I went out anyway and got some good shots that had deep pristine snow. It can be a little unnerving out on your own when the conditions are a bit dicey but I carry a shovel, drinks, hand warmers, blankets etc, just in case.

Where is an old sleigh when you need one? That’s what was going through my mind as I was shooting this over the weekend. This local chapel has always been something I wanted to shoot in winter but it has been elusive. This was a disaster trying to capture this scene as I could only park on a side street up hill where the bright street light is. That meant I had to carry my tripod with camera attached, my tablet, my umbrella and the pole the umbrella mounts in down the hill basically walking on the road and getting over every 5 seconds for cars going up the hill. I finally got set up and of course my wifi box decided it was not going to communicate with my tablet, which means every frame had to be fired from the camera button which oft times will add the possibility of the tripod moving ever so little. I am happy with the shot but If I had been able to use my tablet to fire the camera and flash, I could have gone across the street to add light. I really wanted to have light glowing out from the windows, which I would have accomplished by putting my flash on full power on the opposite side and sending light through the windows across the interior and out the windows you can see. The other thing that helped was it was fairly cold and flurries were flying all day which helped keep the road a little snowy instead of bare blacktop.

This old Inn is located right beside Railroad tracks which you can just make out under the snow. I shot this tonight after we had a couple inches of snow cover the area last night. I arrived here later than I wanted because there were heavy patches of fog in the valleys which sidetracked me a bit, so I may revisit it sometime in the future.

This is a former train station in a nearby town and I shot this a couple weeks ago on a quiet snowy Sunday Morning. I had been shooting in a light snow for about an hour when it suddenly stopped and you could just make out a hint of blue as sunrise drew closer. This right here is about the perfect time to shoot when the sky has gotten just bright enough that everything looks perfect. There are parking spaces all along that curb and usually you will see people park their cars here overnight. I hit the luck trifecta as 1, there were zero cars, 2, no plows had come through, and 3, there was no wind blowing to ruin the tree.

The building shown here was once an elementary school and my mother actually attended here as a child. It has been used for businesses for quite some time and my very first job was here almost 50 plus years ago. I mowed the lawn, chopped firewood and just about whatever I was told to do. Back when I was working here Legionnaires disease was a huge cause for concern across the country because people were dying and no one knew what caused it? There were all kinds of possible causes tossed about but one of them had my mother in a tizzy. At one point Pigeons in large numbers nesting in attics and stirring up dust were rumored as the cause because there was one confirmed situation where this did happen. So this old school had an attic that was like a welcome center for pigeons and when you were upstairs you could easily hear them in the attic above. So my boss wanted to do some cleanup up there and when I told the family medical expert,{my mother} she about lost her mind and told me I am not to go up there! Well that directive went in one ear and out the other and the next time I worked, the boss ushered me up to the ladder which came down from the ceiling and had to be at least twenty foot long. I was somewhat nervous as I climbed step by step because the pigeons were flying around making their trademark cooing sound. When I got to the top and poked my head up to look around, there was a full size Wolf standing there looking at me. Obviously it was stuffed but it scared the daylights out of me at 12 years old! I never did return to the attic but the boss had a good laugh at my reaction.

An Amish buggy makes it way home after a fresh winter storm. No need to rush, just soak it all in.

Another image from the Christmas decorating event I participated in this year. This display was done by a local doll club. Their is a little Dog in front of the fireplace that has been in their scenes for over ten years and it’s like seeing an old friend each time. He has managed to maintain his youthful physique all these years though.

This is a private retirement home in a nearby town. I have been here for work a few times and it always feels like a home away from home. This snow just seemed to compliment the whole vibe you get here.

Believe it or not what you are basically looking at is a parking lot covered by an overnight Winter storm that dropped 4-6 inches and coated everything in fluffy powder. The park entrance comes in to the left straight in front of me and everything behind the big tree is parking lot. I was blessed with a quiet Sunday morning, very little wind and next to no one to interrupt me! That is until about twenty minutes after shooting this when a crew came through and quite literally stopped their big old pickup dead center between the two trees. They got out, noticed me shooting that direction and kind of chuckled as if to say “sorry dude,we got snow to clear”. I knew they had every right to park where they did to do their job and the one guy asked should we move the truck? I said no need. I had gotten several decent shots before their arrival so I was already quite satisfied with the morning. The park itself was named in honor of a gentleman named Tom Grater who was very active in the local recreation center for years and who I personally interacted with as a young boy. He had a very down to earth way of communicating with kids and was always trying to steer them in the right direction.

This is another image taken during the recent snowstorm that wrapped up on a Sunday morning. Thanks to the timing of that storm I found myself basically alone to shoot several scenes of this local downtown decked out for the holidays. I always like having time to do what I want, when I want without complications and that might possibly come from being an only child! When I was young my parents would have fights and the talk of divorce was spoken out loud frequently and became a very real fear that occupied a lot of my mind. Those days of my youth were indelibly burned into my mind,not knowing where I would end up or what might unfold and that is still etched in my memory almost 50 plus years later. To their credit they somehow managed to reconcile their issues, but whenever I see a child who has to deal with the finality of divorce, I remember vividly how it affected me even though my parents stayed together, so I have much empathy for those kids. Now back on track, My wife loves to come up with things to do when I take vacation but those ideas are usually not well received. For some reason I count the days till going back to work and when someone suggests using a day for whatever unplanned idea they have, it usually ends up with me getting irritated and dwelling on the vacation getting shorter? These moments out in the elements and the gift of being able to see and capture the beauty is something I need to express my gratitude for the blessings I have been given more often! Any psychoanalysts out there who have a hypothesis for my strange vacation reasoning?

I recently mentioned that we were participating in what is known as The Ironmaster’s Christmas event where the mansion gets decorated with trees done by a variety of individuals and groups. Last year I wanted to photograph this wagon so I offered to help decorate it. This year it seems I was somehow voted on to do it again. This is what me and my wife came up with and to my delight it snowed while it was decorated. The Gruber Wagon Works is a National Historical Landmark located at the Berks County Heritage Center. This thing is solid and well made.