Polar Vortex Serendipity

One of my favorite new shows on NPR is ‘Snap Judgement.’ If you’ve never listened to it, it’s definitely worth checking out. Not only is Glynn Washington a good storyteller in his own right, but he has also assembled a staff that finds amazing folks with amazing stories.

A recent episode that I’d downloaded to my phone was all about making sweet lemonade out of life’s lemons. So it is for me and the dread Polar Vortex of 2014. Nevermind that I’m a little mystified about the reactions to the ‘cold’ here in North Carolina–I’m admittedly a little biased, since I like the cold and actually dream of taking epic photographic journeys to the world’s far-flung frigid places. It’s chilly here, to be sure. However, it is January, and winter, and, well, it’s just not as cold here as in, say, Minnesota, where the wind chill coming off the great lakes is taking the temperatures down into some seriously negative territory. Things that don’t usually freeze up are frozen. Things that normally work do not. But generally here in the Southeast, we can put on another layer or two and go on with our lives.

The Polar Vortex’s gift to me has been some ice and frost. When I went out to the car this morning to take my son to school, I noticed some lovely ice crystals on the roof of my car, so I ran back into the house and grabbed my Fuji X-E1 and Fujinon 60mm f/2.4 Macro. The macro is a lens that is sharp and renders beautifully, but is criminally underused by me because it is undermined by slow–and more critically–sometimes uncertain focus. I have even gone so far as to pre-order the Fujinon 56 f/1.2 to replace it. Still, on days like today, I am happy to have a macro lens (even if it’s only 1:2) to walk around with and examine things a bit more closely.

All these photos are from a local park, and feature some rare glimpses of frost and ice ’round these parts. For those of you in parts of the country being significantly affected by the cold, hang in there, be safe, and stay warm!