The Winter Cycle
...like clockwork
I’m sure most of us photographers/other creative types have a season that comes along every year where shit just doesn’t stick. Inspiration has taken it’s leave of you and you’ve been leeched of the power to make the work. Photographic winter.
Whilst it can strike at any time of the year, there has been one specific window that has haunted me through out my photographic career: November/December. The minute Halloween passes, both my brother and I know we’re in for an inexplicable dry spell that will last the next couple of months. Every year, like clockwork.
It’s not a total loss in November/December. I can usually find a couple of Christmas related things to hang my hat on, but often I’m just flabbergasted at the stuff I can’t cinch. The heaving Christmas markets of Edinburgh, the amazingly goofy PA Farmers Expo in Harrisburg, the types of things that are normally my bread and butter any other time of the year- in this season I’m shitting the bed and tripping over my own shoelaces. I begin to seriously question myself as a photographer and wonder if I’ve just finally jumped the shark and that’s it. Every year, like clockwork.
So obviously there’s a degree of SAD at play here. The nosedive into darkness and the plunging temperatures. The reduced state of the outer world with people staying indoors and not a whole lot going on. I also think there’s something about the weight of the old year dying that plays on the subconscious as well.
But then comes January. Sometime in this month, one that my pre-photographic self used to loathe, comes liberation, comes breakthrough. Every year, like clockwork.
I don’t know what it is about January that triggers this. The freshness of a new year? The barely perceptible but just about palpable lengthening of the day? Those help but are not enough on their own. Something else must trigger the thaw. Sometimes it’s an event- last years inauguration circus for example- but often times it’s the force of winter itself.
A couple of weeks ago, Gareth and I went out on a night drive on Route 40, from Ellicot City, right through Baltimore and up about White Marsh. There was nary a damn thing to be found compelling enough to pull over for. True, some of what passed by had potential, but only that: they were not yet pictures. At night you need atmosphere- fog, snow, rain, moisture: the nocturnal equivalents to golden hour light in the day. There’s an equation to it. This night was dry as a bone both in terms of subject and inspiration. Sigh. Photographic winter barrels on.
The Shift comes the day after. Flakes start falling as I’m out with the dog. I pull out the camera and flash. Even just shooting point blank at the air itself produced something that felt like possibility. I felt like a photographer again and not just a guy with a camera clunkily dialing it in. January breakthrough had arrived at last.
The following week brought us winter storm Fern who proceeded to dump a foot of snow and ice on us in the wee hours of the morning. You better believe Gareth and I stayed up for it, sketchiness be damned . The car barely clung to the roads as we dodged fleets of plow and salt trucks. Snow would envelope the vehicle minutes after stopping. But it was all worth it to catch the torrent of flakes in blasts of speedlight. We finally gave up when it was clear snow-blindness was going to set in and immovable sheets of ice began to settle on the windshield that would not budge for any amount car generated heat.
Winter wonderland quickly turned into an iced over hellscape that has stubbornly refused to budge . Snowcrete is a real thing and being outside for extended periods of time isn’t what the smart kids are doing. At this point, as a person, I just want this shit to melt, but as a photographer, it’s been a source of sustenance.
To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, there’s winter and then there’s winter. There’s that November/December vampiric desert that never seems to end. But in comes January, so often bringing with it the full force of meteorological winter. For the photographer though, at least for me, it’s something akin to spring. Winter is the season where my photography both feels like it goes to die and also be re-born and refreshed….in both cases because of the very things that make winter winter. It’s a cycle that plays out every year, like clockwork.
Very nice reflection and beautiful pictures
Great read! And some nice pictures you are sharing here!