Mother Nature is an unparalleled designer! Imagine how many snowflakes fall in Wyoming during any particular storm. Then consider that no two snowflakes are the same! Aaaaamaging!
At this time of the year, if temperatures drop low enough, creeks, streams, and lakes freeze over. Early winter a great time to take an hour or two and capture what Mother Nature offers up. As I mentioned earlier, she’s amazing! Like the snowflakes, there is no end to the possibilities. Later in the winter, snow will cover the creeks, and unfortunately, hide the little design gems for the rest of the season. With that said, Mother Nature simply reloads and delivers a new set of winter gems like mounds of snow, icicles, and tree trunks coated on one side with heavy, wet snow.
Mother Nature’s design skills are always on full display for anyone willing to stop and explore. In reality, Mother Nature’s designs are everywhere—in every state and in every season. Many photographers drive or fly long distances to see our mountains, lakes and wildlife, but great subjects are everywhere.
You might enjoy the work of Freeman Patterson—author of many photography books on learning to see the opportunities. Click Here to see a selection of his books available on Amazon. I have quite a few of his books. My favorite is probably “Photographing the World Around You”, but all of them are very good.
For this page, I limited my scope to subjects with frozen water, rocks, bubbles, and late fall leaves. Again, opportunities are everywhere. There is a portion of Freeman’s book where he explains how he dropped everything to photograph the iridescent colors of an oil slick on his driveway.
Mother Nature does all of the “heavy lifting”. A photographer simply has to “see” and then photograph small chunks of the “real estate”. Unlike most landscapes and wildlife photos, a photographer can move around the subject for a pleasing composition. In other words, there isn’t an up or down. Additionally, it’s difficult to say there is a right or wrong!
Interestingly, all of these icy subjects have a very short life. They are here today, and possibly gone today! Gone today, but, if it freezes again, they are back tomorrow in an entirely new configuration. Mother Natures goes back to the “drawing board” each night.
As an “artist/photographer”, we are not confined to a lot of rules, but they DO come in handy. For example, repetition, harmony and balance are principles of design. Same for gradation and variation. I liked the repetion of the warm blues and the overall texture in this photo.
A “broken pattern” is often more interesting than a consistent pattern. In other words, this photo might have been okay if there were six leaves equally spaced, but the unexpected shape of the exposed rock draws your eye there. Conventional wisdom might suggest your eyes would be drawn to the shapes with the color.
Over the years, I’ve been around a lot of woodcarvers. You might ask on of them how they did it, and they’ll reply, “Well, I start with a big log, then carve away anything that didn’t look like a bear!” Similarly, Mother Nature creates the scenes. All I do is crop away the rest of the big world into a small rectangle.
Some of the images on this page contain “literal” subjects. In other words, you see the subject is a group of leaves, or a single leaf. Other images are totally abstract designs. A viewer might have to decipher the image, or maybe not be able to figure out exactly what it is at all. When viewed as a group, as on this page, the clues are supplied.
I took several shots of the ice texture, then included one with a captured leaf. Rich morning light adds to any photo.
Hoar frost can form on objects after a little overnight fog. Without the hoar frost, this would be an ordinary leaf. The holes in the leaf make it more interesting, and the soft background texture adds to the capture. Most artists would also notice the complimentary (opposite colors on a color wheel) in this shot. Blue and orange are complimentary colors, along with red/green and purple/yellow. Tertiary colors also have a corresponding complementary colors.
Colors are also broken into warm and cool colors, or hues. Each hue can have varying degrees of saturation and luminance. The mystery object in the lower right adds a touch of warmth to an otherwise cool image.
I found a treasure chest of textures and subjects in this little stream. I liked the variety in the leaves, the moody light shapes, and the ice texture in this one.
One of my college art professors might suggest this one is “busy”. Another might like it because it has a lot of movement and variety. The image gives a viewer plenty of reasons to keep studying it.
This one is more simple, but still offers plenty of data and a lot of variety of textures.
“Simplicity is the key to good design”. A lot is said in this image with only four leaves and a rock.
There is a lot of freedom in shots like the ones on this page. As I mentioned earlier, there is no up or down, or left and right. I could easily rotate around my chosen slice of the creek bottom. About the only technical issue would be to shoot the image so my shadow didn’t cause problems.
This photo is essentially the same as the previous capture. I just rotated over the subject. I chose to let the main diagonal fracture run diagonally (more pleasing to me), or I could have turned to run it either vertical or horizontal. A artist would tell you it “just looks better”, but my college professors would tell us why!
Of the group, this image feels a little more “experimental” than the rest. The leaves flow in from the upper left, looking a lot like they are actually floating above the ice. The lower right is in the shadows, adding unexpected variety. I chose to leave the tidbit of a leaf in the upper right. When I look at the image, my eyes move around a lot, roaming up to the upper right but not off the page. The diagonal line does a good job of pulling me back to the leaves near the middle.
I have to ask myself if I would like this one better without the crack on the left side? If I thought it was a distraction, I could clone it out, but I think I like it.
I found numerous rocks in the stream that were partially exposed, but gravitated to the ones with a captured leaf.
Earlier in the year, I photographed some leaves submerged in Cottonwood Creek. They looked interesting at the time, but when I viewed them on my computer, they just looked like blurry leaves. Lesson learned! In the photos above, the exposed portion of the rock and the exposed leaf explain what is going on with the layers of ice and submerged leaves.
I might have preferred one more leaf in this one. Remember the “rule of odds”! One is better than two, three is better than two or four, and so forth. Other than for making a point on this page, I would probably delete this one.
I liked the variety of textures in this one. It also has good eye movement. When isolated from the group, it might take a viewer a minute to decipher it.
When I first noticed, this subject, it was still in shadows. I returned to it just as the sun was glancing across the frozen stems of ice.
Two leaves, a shadow, and some ice. How simple can that be! Still, this one tells a story about the transitions of the seasons..
Comments and Considerations
A couple of days ago, I photographed 1200 pound moose crossing a stream. While taking those photos, I made a mental note to go back for some winter detail photos. Even though I own a macro lens and a tripod with an extension arm to help me get overhead, I opted to use my Nikon D500 and Tamron 18-400mm lens, and instead of setting up every shot on a tripod, I hand held the photos. Most of the images were captured at 1/320th second to 1/500th second. My previous experiences with that lens and body combination were always very good, so I felt confident for these images. The lens focuses amazingly close—even at 400mm on a 1.5 crop body!
Not everyone, especially wildlife purists, will like images like the ones on this Feature Page. I get it on “some” level. I spent 45 minutes or so taking one of the sets of the photos for this page. Interestingly, when I made it back to the truck on the second day, I saw a beautiful bull Moose cross the road near my truck. I changed bodies and lenses and headed back with my tripod for another hour of wildlife photos. Most of photography is “timing”, right? If I hadn’t stopped to “smell the flowers”, I would have missed him. A wildlife photographer might suggest that if I hadn’t “wasted” a couple of hours taking ice photos, I might have found other wildlife subjects somewhere else. Yes, I get it on some level, but I LIKE taking these!
For this page, I took hundreds of ice, rocks, and leaves photos over a period of two days. I could have easily taken hundreds more! I processed a lot more that could have made it onto this page, too. It’s difficult to suggest that any or all of the images on this page would make good “wall hangers” as an isolated image. I might print a grouping of them and cluster them together on a wall to add some context. Additionally, small photos like these make great images for anyone creating a coffee table book or doing an article on winter travel or winter photography.
I had a friend and photographer, Gary Pumplin. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago and I miss him a lot. I used to tell Gary, “I went all Freeman Patterson today”. He knew exactly what I meant, and usually got a smile out of it.
I have numerous tour openings available in November and December!
The photo tours help me pay bills and continue to add content to this site. Keep me in mind if you are going to be in the valley! My tours are licensed by the National Park Service and National Elk Refuge.
I offer year round photo tours in Grand Teton National Park. Seasons are changing! Book now! Click the image for additional information.
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