For a little more than three years we lived in St Leon, which you will find on your map of Germany if you head south on the autobahn from Heidelberg toward Karsruhe. Walldorf might be a little easier to spot, and once there you are almost home. Going on southward a bit, enough wandering through the smaller roads would bring you past this little chapel. The plowed fields and frosted rows gave some contrast to the effect of the icing, and the haziness gave a nice diffuse light to the ice on the tree limbs. Too often when I have wanted to make frost or ice photos the backgrounds were too busy or distracting, or just not much to look at, so I am happy to have had this moment at this spot to work with. When you think about it, one thing photography is very much about, is a moment.

Icy Morning - Field, Trees, Chapel

Icy Morning - Chapel in Frosty Field

WEATHER - it is always with us. When I first started making photographs, when you bought a roll of film and opened the box, the first thing to pop out was a litttle folded instruction sheet. It would include the ASA - later the ISO - speed rating, and then a row of little pictures to help you determine the exposure, depending on whether you were in full sun, cloudy bright, open shade, maybe snow or bright sand. They never said anything about rain, fog, mist, or ice, but it has been my experience that those conditions have been the occasions for many of my most satisfactory pictures. Snow and fog or mist cover many elements that might otherwise be distracting, and so increase the extent to which the picture becomes an abstraction of what is in front of the lens, a simplified view. Oddly, because of the greater loss of clarity with distance from the lens, they can enhance the appearance of depth of the picture - which is a greater complexity, rather than simplicity, of expression - so you have both qualities at once.

Weather that is other than sunny is associated with a wide palette of emotions. Let's set aside sadness, but there is also a romance about a misty autumn afternoon, a coziness about being inside looking out on a rainy day or a poetry in patterns of falling raindrops and in light reflected by moisture in the air or on surfaces such as streets. Pensive or reflective moods are not necessarily sad but can be beautiful quiet moments in lives more usually fast-paced. And as I say above in the comments on the pictures, a photograph is not only of a given subject, but also of a brief moment - it is a stopping of time, with which we can in the normal course of things barely keep up.