It April 2nd and it snowed about 5 inches last night but the streets and sidewalks are clear and its clear blue sky today. Perfect snow conditions! I have the day off so this morning I drove over to Prophet's Town State Park to do some photography work.
How about a little night time snow photography. Today is April 1st and Mother Nature has decided to played an April Fools joke on us!
Good news is than I get to drive over to Prophet's Town State Park in the morning to do some more early morning photography. Looking forward to it! Might as well make the best of the situation.
This past Saturday was a beautiful winter day. Clear blue sky, nice layer of snow, and temperatures starting around 36 in the morning rising into the 40's later in the day.
It was a great day for a walk. It almost turned into a bad day.
I drove out to Tippecanoe Battlefield Park. This is one of my favorite locations to get right into nature. This is the begining of the north end of the Wabash Heritage Trail. Most of the other tails I use you have to hike for at least 10-20 minutes before you are fully immersed in nature.
From the parking lot you walk down some stairs which lead right to Burnett's Creek. The trail closely follows the creek all the way to the Wabash river. Its a very attractive hike all year round. Its a two and a half hour hike from the park to Davis Ferry Bridge anf back.
At the bottom of the stairs is a spot I usully go to check on the condition of the creek. I evaluate the hight of the creek waters and look for fog. Today the water was high but not too high to walk across some rocks to get in the center of the creek. This is the same spot I took the photo's in "A Foggy Morning" photo's.
I should have known better than to try to walk across some wet icy rocks without a walking stick or something. I don't have the greatest balance as it is. Yes, I fell back side first into the cold creek. I sat there for a few seconds thinking "O my god this is cold!". I was wearing some heavy wool gloves which were quickly soaked with cold and muddy water. And the cold water got inside my boots and soaked my socks.
I got up and throw my gloves on some rocks near by and think "well I am out here so I might was well take a few photo's before going back". I was thinking the hike was over for the day. The first three photo's were taken from that spot. Not great, but nice winter scence pictures.
After taking these photo's I evaluated my situation. I was cold but not freezing. There was very little wind and I knew the temperature was going to get warmer. I decided to walk back to my van to drop off my gloves. They were not going to dry in time to be useful. I decided the short walk back would give me time to decide if I needed to abort the rest of the hike. And one other good thing. Despite the fact the parking lot had a lot of cars in it. No one saw me fall in the creek. No loss of dignity.
I decided it was too nice of a day to give up. My pants were mostly dry by the time the hike was over. But my feet were wet the whole time. I was able to keep my hands warn by keeping them in my coat pocket most of the time.
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| This is the bridge that cross's the creek |
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| I like the curving river banks that lead the eye |
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| The deep blue sky and the dark tree contrasting with the snow white ground. |
From time to time I will crop some of my photo's. Below is the original photo plus several cropings of the original. What do you think?
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| Too much stuff in the background. It did not blur out as much as I had hoped. |
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| I cropped out as much of the background as I could. But that left the eye's of the skull in the center of the photo. Not sure if I like that. |
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| Here I cropped out some the back of the skull. That left the closest eye on one of the thirds. I like this version best. |
The wind chill was in the single digits most of the day today. I decided it was too cold to go on a hike. I took a short hike yesterday and my face was very cold by the time I got back. And it was colder today. It was very difficult to not go on a hike. I really wanted to go out. I did take some pictures around the yard of the snow.
The following are some pictures I took yesterday on my hike using my iPod Touch. I did not want to take my Nikon out in the heavily falling snow. We got about 4 - 6 inches of snow Saturday.
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| Panoramic mode of the iPod Touch |
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| The lens on the iPod Touch is too close to the edge of the device. It is too easy to get a finger in the way |
The following pictures were taken the next day in my back yard.
