Despite the chaos that the annual snow flurry brings to the country, our days under the snowflakes are fleetingly rare. So, I cloaked myself in layers and headed out to the snow covered Richmond Park to catch the first of the heavy January snowfall in my neighbourhood.
I remember thinking that snow seemed quite magical when I was a child…and I think a bit of that still exists for many of us, when we have a chance to pause and forget the delayed trains and treacherous pavements and general inconvenience of this, the most lavish contender from the winter weather spectrum.
Photography in extreme weather conditions has lots of interesting added factors to take into consideration. Apart from trying to stop the camera from getting too damp, there’s the issue of avoiding falling over when stepping through untrodden snow – most particularly in parkland where you’re not sure if it’s flat ground, an uneven incline or a pool of water under the glistening white you’re just putting your foot in.
I spend most of my time in the worlds of portrait photography and music photography, so taking photographs of a park under a blanket of snow is an interesting contrast – the deep solitude of venturing across a quiet landscape and taking as long as you wish, on whatever aspect of the environment that draws your attention, is both strange and luxurious.
This was my favourite photograph from the shoot. The snowflakes dancing madly across the frame and the mysterious, misty woods with trees fading into the background and seemingly disappearing into a swirling sea before rooting in the earth, gives a sense of movement, stillness and suspense. I like photographs that ask questions. This one asks the viewer to take a walk through the woods, to look for what’s hidden in the mist, to seek beyond the snowflakes and the mist to…whatever lies beyond.
Yes, snow still has an intrinsic magic within it. Perhaps, by seldom being seen across my local landscape, it will continue to ever enthral and invite questions of my imagination…
