JAN 23 : 23/365

If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?

– Jennifer McMahon

Mother Nature never ceases to amaze me.  Regardless of the season, she goes about creating the most spectacular masterpieces from the simplest of ingredients.  Take for example water.  In the past 48 hours I’ve watched as she’s turned this one ingredient into a beautiful swirling snowstorm, which melted into clear sparkling rivulets of slushy water the next day, which then froze into spectacular sheets of shattered ice overnight.  Each and every rendition of her performance seemingly more awe-inspiring than the last.  Today, I turned my camera towards Mother Nature’s latest work of art:  Ice.

Things were a bit slippery when I walked my dogs this morning, and since I’m still nursing a low back sprain I was particularly careful to keep my eye on the ground as I skirted around the patches of ice that had formed overnight.  Some parts of the walk were truly treacherous, alternating between crunchy, frozen ruts of slushy snow and slick-as-the-dickens sidewalks from neighbors who had failed to shovel yesterday.  Despite this, I found myself somewhat grateful for the need to keep an eye on my next step as I soon discovered that gazing at the terrain below me gave the impression of viewing miniature icebergs and crevasses from high above the earth.  In one particular area, water had pooled in the ruts left by cars the previous day and had frozen into beautiful abstract patterns reminiscent of crackle glass.  I simply knew I had to capture this spontaneous art with my camera.

The results are what you see here.  Now of course the ice didn’t show up naturally in such vivid colors (…that would be truly be amazing!)  I achieved these colorful results by creating a custom color gradient layer in PS to enhance what Mother Nature had already provided.  She did all the hard work, I merely provided the zing.

And for those interested in the ‘before’ images…

And here is the underwhelming area where I discovered these masterpieces… as Henry David Thoreau put so eloquently:  It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.