Not Everything Needs to be “Beautiful”

The wintertime is a favorite time for me to photograph. You have to dig a little deeper, you have to work a little harder. The days are short, the nights long. In North Carolina, the heat and humidity are gone and I feel like I can breathe, that I can move around comfortably.

The colors are muted, the palette more drab, the sky leaden. There’s no attention grabbing color, no flashy pop. Rather, there is subtlety to consider, small changes in contrast, tone, and light. Pattern, texture, geometry.

These photos may be too subtle, they may be dull, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the luminous quality of winter light filtered through lingering clouds, or the cool breeze carried across the harvested fields. The winter is a time of contemplation, reflection, and charting the course for the new year.