Happy Sunday!

We woke to freezing rain yesterday, which, by full daylight turned to huge feathery wet flakes of snow. Not totally welcome as the last of the 3 plus feet of compacted snow from winter is just about gone from the backyard, and we are all (I think I speak for the general population here) getting a bit eager for spring in Southern Maine. It showed pretty heavily through noon, lightly covered any bare ground, and clung to bushes and trees and standing grasses.

This shot is out the window of the car at Parson’s Beach and gives a good sense of the density of the falling snow. In the dim light, I used Sports Mode, to force the ISO higher and the shutter speed faster, to catch the flakes, as much as possible, in mid-air.

And this shot was taken at about 3:15 that same afternoon, from just about exactly the same spot, looking the other way. The sky had cleared, the snow on the ground had melted away, and the sun had a touch of spring, even summery, warmth that made me, for one, hopeful.

And that is early spring in Maine…the most inconstant of seasons: Winter and seeming summer in a single day.

Both with the Canon SX20IS. 1) 160mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 400. Sports Mode. 2) 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode (biased for the sky by tipping the camera up and locking exposure…then processed for the foreground in Lightroom).

And being Sunday: certainly there must be a spiritual lesson in the rapid alteration of the season and the mood from morning to afternoon of a single day. Of course, the day itself is rare enough for record…in it we see the change that is spring happening in such an unmistakable way, in such an exaggerated way, that we can not miss it…so that the day becomes a parable for seasonality and, in a way, in this season, for the hope associated with the coming of spring. I know it makes me feel like throwing off care, like embracing a hopeful turn of mind, like renewing my trust. On a day like this I am reminded: Though dark may cloud the morning, I know who wins the day. And that is true in any season. It is just hard to miss on such a day.