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Winter Light
December 2005
Winter light is different from the light of any other time. The sun rises later and sets earlier and it beats down on us less intensely. In the most northern realms there is hardly any sunlight at this time of the year, but we are lucky. We still have the sun in the sky for quite a few hours, and because it is nearer to the horizon it casts long shadows. When there is snow on the ground, we sometimes have beautiful blue shadows spreading across the surface.
Our cover photograph, “Apple Trees and Ice” by Rich Van Kleeck, shows the rays of the sun behind the branch of a tree. In the center the snow is pure white, dotted with a few footprints of some animals that passed by. The branches of the tree against the sky create an impressive pattern, almost as if an artist like Jackson Pollock created the forms.
In our first spread, the photos appear to have been taken in the afternoon, when the sun had moved to the western sky. Skip Malley’s photograph of “Belleayre Trees” is bright and cheerful, with branches reaching up to the clear blue sky, with the dense forest in the background, and the lovely snow in the foreground covered by shadows on the rolling ground. Joan Holley’s photograph of “Winter Shadows” focuses on a single tree in a snow covered field. The sun here also appears to be descending toward the horizon, but it is the composition of the shadows of that one tree that gives a special character to the image.
The sun is also a critical component of the next two photographs. On the left is “Snowy Clearing” by John Hayes. The photographer manages to create a dramatic composition by capturing the horizontal branch of a tree that spreads across the page. The sun is dazzling as it peeks through the bare branches in the rear, and the shadows on the snow spread out below. On the right is “Road and Sky” by Russell Bromberg, and there the sun lights up the fringes of the clouds as well as the roof of the barn and a field of snow in the distance.
Next the sun can be seen on the horizon. On the left we see a sunrise in the photograph entitled “Dawn on the Hudson” by Robert J. Near. The light seems fresh and bright against the dark shadows in the distance, and in the foreground we can see the emerging dawn. On the right, there is “Winter Sunset,” by Michael Sibilia, with the sun dropping behind the hills in the distance, and a fence stretching across the field in the foreground. In the former the world is getting brighter; in the latter the light is disappearing.
We end with a remarkable image of a full moon in a night sky by Randy Williams. The outlines of the snow-covered trees can barely be seen, but they help to create a frame for the moon, which is the central object. The photograph shows a brilliant yellow image of the moon giving character to a dark, shadowy scene. It is an ideal image with which to end our portfolio of December photographs.
-David Finn
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