This is my first picture of the year. For the second time in less than a week, we were a getting a major snow storm. I was out at about 8pm doing my last shovel of the day, before leaving the snow to its own devices overnight (and happily needing only one more sidewalk clearing this morning).

Considering how much it was snowing, the night was quite light, doubtless helped by the snow already on the ground. I was looking at the houses down the street, and thought, I like how the atmosphere could make an interesting picture. When I was done shoveling, I went in and got my camera and tripod. Even standing on the porch, with the snow swirling around, there was no way I wanted to have my camera exposed any more than it needed to be. I adjusted all the settings I needed, and made a preliminary focus, from inside the front door, put the camera on the tripod and wrapped a plastic bag around the camera. Stepping outside, I extended the tripod legs, pressed the shutter and went straight back indoors.

My current camera is amazing at capturing clear, bright images at night. So bright, that they look like they could easily have been taken during the day. Which then creates the problem of how to adjust the image to produce a picture where you can see what could be seen, and yet still make it clear what time it was taken. I’m not convinced this has it yet.