Shooting opportunities have been few and far between of late, but I simply couldn’t resist the appeal of our latest snow storm, one foot of pure white joy (well I wasn’t saying that earlier today as I was shoveling the driveway). With very little time to spare until sunset, I put my snowshoes on and walked across to neighbouring Britannia park. Here, the river is frozen from bank to bank and offers many great shooting opps.

The light didn’t materialise the way I’d hoped, however if you are willing to make the effort, great photos can be made in any light, provided you open your mind to them. Here, the river is entirely frozen, and because of its size, and wide-open nature, the ever-present winds carve some very interesting shapes in the freshly fallen snow.

As the sun was setting on my left, I positioned myself so that I would be facing north. In this way, the shadows cast by the evening light would help define the beautiful sunlit snow dunes scattered across the river. I then put on my 80-200 and set out to isolate smaller sections of the river to better highlight those shapes. An aperture of f/18-22 was chosen to maximise depth of field.

As the sun set, the contrast became considerably lower in the subdued light. I then chose to slightly overexpose the scene (2/3 stop) to obtain a high key photograph to emphasize the smooth, almost silk-like shape of the snow blanket.