Photo A Day #1 – Very Late First Snow – 1 January 2016

I’ve never been one to go in for what feels a little gimmicky, but I think that there is value to forcing yourself to take one useful image every day for a year. As a photographer, the most dreaded thing that can happen is that you can easily become stale. The same old patterns, the same old images. We all suffer from it at one point or another. 2015 for me was the year of the studio, where I volunteered three times to raise money for dog rescues – Under My Wing Pug Rescue on 25 January and Valley Boxer and Mastiff Rescue on 24 October and again for 2 days on 5 and 6 December.

So this year I want to continue and even expand that trend while working on other techniques. I would like to do a bit of product photography and some basic portraiture. I would like to perfect head shots (no, I am not a sniper) and perhaps shoot models again. We shall see …

But for now, I have started off early on the day as I was getting the turkey ready by walking out to the front yard and shooting what I saw. We had 17 degree temperatures on Christmas Eve and beautiful sun with strong winds. We have plus 8 degrees (this is Canada by the way, so I am speaking Celsius) which is shirt-sleeve weather for a man raised in Winnipeg. And then the fit hit the Shan (please put your guess at that reference in the comments if you know where that comes from, and try to do it without the aid of Google please.)

We’ve been pretty much pounded with snow over a short span and it continues to put a little bit down every day. Cool …

I shot the following images with the Panasonic GM1 and allowed it to meter the scene with added stop and a half or so of compensation because you must do that when the whole scene is snow. Otherwise, the camera will do what it must and turn the entire image mid-grey. And do note that when I say "photo a day" I really mean at least one photo, not just one photo.

And that is that for the first entry of a new year.

Happy New Year to you all ...