This was the mildest Christmas since I have been in Iowa during the holiday season. As every year we spent the holiday at Joan’s parents in Cherokee, a small town in northwest Iowa. Over the years it became a Christmas tradition to have at least once a walk around a lake in one of the city’s parks. I remember years when this walk took no more than maybe fifteen minutes, because the temperatures and icy wind were just brutal. Not so much this year. Almost no wind and temperatures above freezing made for a different experience. Our little dog Cooper didn’t mind that we stretched it out to over an hour on all three “mini hikes” this year.
It was Christmas morning when the sun finally appeared from behind the clouds and lifted all the gray. The lake was covered partially with a thin layer of ice and that’s where I tried to find a photo that tells the story. While working on this image I became aware again how important white balance can be for the story telling. Most of the time when snow and ice is part of my photo I make sure that some blue, at least in the shadows, transmits the message, “it’s cold here”. My first trial with this image was a conversion to black and white with a slight blue touch on the final photo. It looked good but it was just not what this Christmas day was about. The photo was originally made with a white balance set to cloudy and this is how I finally left it. The warm touch of the sun in this image reflects a lot better what I saw and how it felt that morning…