It was colder than a witch’s…okay maybe that particular characterization isn’t fair to witches. Maybe they don’t get all that cold and if they do who’s to say that any one part of a witch gets any colder than any other, right?
So it was cold and a good day to stay inside. It was cold enough to make going to work a good idea and that kids is cold!
But cold also brings some interesting opportunities for image making and that is what I want to ask you about, Didja get any pictures of all of the winter stuff today.
It was raining, a cold and nasty rain when I left the house this morning. On the way over the mountain, yes, I know Libby doesn’t go over a mountain, but I’m from Texas and anything higher than a speed bump qualifies as a mountain, so on my way over the mountain there was snow. It made the forested parts of Libby look down right Currier and Ivesie.
When I got to Coos Bay, it was dry but very bitter. That’s a lot of different slices of the weather pie for one day. Did you make use of it?
Come-on, you won’t get this kind of chance all that often, even here on the Oregon Coast where the weather changes like a host at the Oscars. You have to get out at least long enough to take a few pictures so that when you get back inside you can add them to whatever project you are working on.
A coupla things to consider, take a picture. Yeah I know you are a painter and don’t hold with the magic box which steals the very soul form things, but let me tell you, that magic box lets you grab an image and get back in the warm studio.
You know damn well you are not a nineteenth century artist, living in a garret, un-heated, drafty and starving. You eat regularly, paint with pre-mixed paints and have central heat in that studio and that makes for a much happier artist. If Vinnie the Go had had central heat he might still have painted sunflowers but he wouldn’t have been driven to ear surgery by the cold uncomfortable studio.
So, grab a camera and get out and take a picture or two when the weather offers this sort of quick change wonder and then duck back inside and get warm.
Now when you do go out, protect your camera.
Back in the Paleolithic area when I started taking pictures the biggest cold weather fear was condensation between the lens elements. Want to ruin an expensive lens fast? Take it from a seventy degree studio out into thirty degree weather and watch as the water forms inside the elements where you can’t get at it. If you are lucky, letting it sit for a week or so in a warm dry place will evaporate out the moisture. If not, you have a most interesting bookend.
Now the big problem is battery life. You don’t even think about your batteries, you charge the camera when it runs down and you forget about it until you want to use it and the battery is dead cause it sat on a shelf for half a year and didn’t move and now you are fit to be tied cause Brad Pitt parked his yacht in the channel and took a swim across to the north spit in the buff and your camera was a doorstop.
Cold can suck the life out of a battery in half an hour. Don’t take your camera out in the cold without giving some thought to how to keep it warm.
Now the easiest way, for those of you who are goil sort of people and if you are a small guy this works too, buy a jacket a coupla sizes too big. No silly, this is your utility jacket, get it at Goodwill or the Hospice or the Salvation Army, the object is to keep you and your camera warm, not impress the tar out of George Clooney.
See if it is too big you can tuck the camera between your warm body, your body is still warm isn’t it, and the jacket and keep the camera and your bod warm and ready for action. When you want to take a picture pull it out take the picture and put it right back inside where it will stay warm and safe and the batteries will live to go stale on your shelf.
This will also help acclimatize the lens so that condensation doesn’t get inside the elements. This isn’t the problem it was when 35 mm was king, the new digital cameras use lenses which are smaller in size while being bigger in reach and they have tighter construction so water isn’t as welcome as it once was.
Once you get your pictures and get back in the house get them out of the camera so that even if there is some lasting effect from the cold they won’t get eaten.
And why would you go to all of this trouble?
Because the light on cold bitter days does good things and even the most common objects start to look like fine art.
Not being able to keep my hands off it I did give it a little tweak.
Okay, so I did more than a little tweak.
But I couldn’t have done any of it without going out into the cold.
Oh yes, not once did I encounter any witches with or without extremely cold…noses!
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