T'was a Cold and Icy Christmas...

Like many parts of the United States, the Pacific Northwest region ended up getting absolutely pummeled with snow and ice during the Christmas holiday season. And though I'm the sort of person who normally enjoys a good snowfall, I have to admit that the whole wintery experience became a bit tiresome when the power gave out in The Global Household™ two days before Christmas (with the house cooling down to a chilly 40 degrees F.) and our local road commission decided that it just wasn't worth taking the time and expense to plow any of the residential side streets. I am very grateful to my nephew (Bronson) and his wife (Tonya) for taking me in Christmas Eve and giving me a warm place to sleep. I also thank them for the delicious brandy that they served and the laugh-out-loud funny (though kinda' crude) movie that we watched on Christmas Eve: Just Friends

A neighborhood pine tree, covered with ice and snow. A nearby tree came down the next day and took out the power in our neighborhood for three and a half days.

Though it's not indicated all too well in the photo, each individual pine needle is coated with about a quarter inch of frozen ice.


One good aspect to all the recent snow and ice is that many of the neighbors came out of their houses to... Uhhh... Well... Get out of their houses. Honestly, it's kinda' boring to just hang around inside a (cold) house when a major weather event is taking place outside -- and it was pretty obvious that throughout the neighborhood, people were anxious to get out and be around other people.


One of the neighborhood kids, blasting down an icy sidestreet.

Yes, he was wearing shorts.

No, it was not warm outside.

Shot at dusk with a tungsten white balance (to give the blue look) and then strobed from camera right with a Vivitar 285. A full CTO gel was on the strobe.

Also, this was a 1/20th of a second exposure, during which I tracked the young man as he flew by.


Some people engaged in Winter activities that went just a bit beyond the usual. As an example, one of my nearby neighbors ("Jenny the Surfer Girl") decided that snowy streets of Portland were the perfect place to practice her wave riding skills. Of course, we didn't have any waves at the time (they were all frozen solid), though this didn't really seem to bother Jenny.



Jenny hangs ten on an ancient beat-up surfboard.

Shot digitally and then treated in Photoshop to look as though it had been taken using expired film in an old crappy camera.



Finally, as a quick update on life in the Pacific Northwest, power has been restored to nearly all of the nearby neighborhoods (in the Portland area, at least), and we've returned to our more typical weather patterns (rain, rain, and more rain) rather than the unusual snowfall of last week. If time, energy, and content allows, I'll try to come up with another posting before the year ends which -- and this absolutely blows me away -- takes place in just two days.

Yikes!

Matt