Snowscenes

We don’t really get much proper snow in north Lancashire. I don’t think we ever have really, though I have memories as a small child in the early 80s of a thick coating in the Blackpool suburbs. Maybe it was a one-off, but since then the only decent drops I could list would be February ’96 and the winters of 2009 and 10.

As a photographer you make plans for snow. You find stunning buildings, ruins, or scenes, and you think ‘that would look perfect as a snow scene’. Then when it comes of course you realise you can’t get the car out and you have to make do with something local. Just as well then that nobody has any choice but to stay local at the moment.

I was sat at work on the Friday afternoon that the snow began to fall thickly. When I say ‘work’ you can read ‘home’ of course – all boundaries have blurred in the last year and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more tied to my home or so trapped by it. Perhaps that’s why in the middle of lockdowns and a rampantly contagious pandemic I took the decision to sell up and move on. But more on that later.

For that afternoon it was surreal, a blizzard blowing round the old walls and courtyards outside my window quickly settling as a thick white blanket under leaden grey skies. By late afternoon it had slowed somewhat and I head out for the permitted local wander. Once I’d unpacked the ski wear and camera gear I hadn’t expected to be needing quite so soon when I’d boxed them up for the move just a week earlier…

There were plenty of people out and about but the snow seemed to deaden the ambient background noise, their forms in the monochromatic surroundings almost passing by silently as I wandered with camera in hand until I stumbled across the scene above. With the snow still falling and the light fading it’s not the cleanest shot I’ve ever taken, but I rather like its stark minimalism and it captures the scene as I saw it pretty faithfully.

I had to ramp up the exposure compensation massively of course: your camera reads a scene in grey and works out the lights and darks around it. If the scene is overly white in reality it just mistakes it for the grey it was looking for – which is why so many people end up with underexposed or blue tinted snow pics. I think I wandered well over five miles all told and believed that was it. But then…

The morning after was perfectly still and under clearer skies the snow was no longer falling, which prompted me to get up early and capture the scene again before the winter sun rose and bathed it in light – this time with a long lens and shooting at around the 150mm mark. Importantly the snow was still clinging to the branches of every tree and as an added bonus there was a layer of mist lingering around the walls of the scene I’d found the previous afternoon.

I’m torn over which is better in this set as the shot above captures that mist, but the main image at the top of the page – a better composition I feel taken just a few minutes later – is lacking it. The pre-sunrise glow in the sky gives an almost mythical feel to the scenes though and I’m really pleased I made the effort to brave the cold.

These fields with scrubby trees and bits of wall sit right next to the M6 and do not make for a scene I’d ever have registered or given a second thought to before the snow turned it into something so serene. Indeed, I’ve looked at it since and it’s completely unremarkable – but then photography for me is half about capturing light and half about capturing the moment.

Perfectly framed like a scene from a snow globe here we have the main water tower of the former Lancaster Moor Hospital annexe, Arnold Kershaw’s imposing Gothic-revival extension to the former county lunatic asylum. Now converted for residential use it’s been my home since 2015 – but only for a short while longer. I’m glad to have captured it covered in snow, adding to an expansive set that documents the place derelict, through conversion and in all other seasons before I leave it behind.

And as if one house move mid-pandemic isn’t enough it’s only the first of two for me this year. Later in the spring I’ll be moving out of the area altogether. I shouldn’t need to hold off on packing the ski wear for that one but I won’t be sealing the camera gear in a box until the removal vans trundle through the asylum gates next time. You never know when you might need it at short notice.

Thanks for stopping by. With any luck we’ll all be able to get out adventuring again soon…