Fresh snow is something we have had a lot of this winter. I think dirty, worn snow is one of the least attractive sights (all things being relative of course) that you can see. So far this winter, we have not had to put up with it long. Just about when things are getting ugly, we get 4-14 inches of new snow to make the landscape winter-beautiful again. And several of those snowfalls have been clingy enough to frost the pines, in classic northern winter fashion.

The only trouble, photographically speaking, is that the piles of snow make accessing the likely places for photography more and more difficult. Trails are hazardous, with layers of compacted snow and ice under the new cover. Parking at the places I like to go in the summer is not plowed out. Etc. So I find myself returning to the same winter scenes over and over again…simply because I can get there. 🙂

Back Creek, where it meets the Mousam River, just a few hundred yards from the ocean is one of them. It has open marsh for snow fields, great pines to be frosted, blue reflective water, and an expanse of open sky. These elements can almost always be arranged into a pleasing composition…in almost any weather, including, of course, fresh snow.

Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 52mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f16. Processed for mild HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.