During that odd week between the Christmas fete and the ushering in of another official division of the future, there was an uncharacteristic surge of wild activity. G’s brother brought his family from California. My sister and her family came up from Texas. there were lunches with good friends, farewells to dear but sold horses (not mine). Too much food, lots of pajamas and movies. Snow. Then weak sun.
Snow. This is with the new lens, which should mean beautiful clarity. Except that I ended up on some esoteric and awful ISO setting by accident, so these shots look like they were taken in 1952 with really, really fast and faded film. Anyway – this is the barn, its gingerbread-ish coating of sparkling icing slowly sliding down the roof.
From the inside, it looked like the curl of a wave, just beginning to break overhead. I wanted to get the glow of light through the snow, but instead, I got grain. Tons of it.
A wave with teeth. I can’t even brighten this in PS. Too awful an exposure.
The stripes are formed by the lines of the steel roof.
I had been walking down the long driveway, charmed by the silver diamonds scattered everywhere, and wondering why sometimes there are diamonds, but other times the jewels are rubies and amethysts and emeralds. As I trudged back to the car and turned to face the west and my neighbors almost clear driveway –
What did I see? JEWELS. So I shot them. I’ve tried to photoshop this to make the snow look as white-bluish as it really was, but if I lighten this shot, you can’t see the color I was seeing. If you click this shot and follow it to flickr, then click all sizes, you’ll be able to see the color more clearly. Amazing.
I went the next day, New Year’s Day, with my camera, hoping to reshoot all of this, having discovered the terrible ISO setting too late. I had visions of the wave over the barn being even more dramatic, and delivering an even clearer image of the jewels. But when I got to the barn, I found nothing. Everything had melted. Nothing left on the roof. Nothing even left on the ground. Jewels vanished. Reset, I guess, for the new year. Which I am not yet. Reset. If anything, I am going into this thing pretty tired and heavy. I am swearing off chocolate and staying up late. Also, dull gray days and frozen water troughs. I wish I could swear off cleaning the house, but we’d all die of terrible diseases. And you can’t keep deer and sheep and nativities up forever. I wish you could.
I really wish you could.
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