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I didn’t know, when I first took up outdoor photography, that I’d have to get used to looking really silly.

When I first slung that camera around my shoulders and set off to capture the world, I had visions of Jim Brandenburg and Craig Blacklock in my head. Their photos are so—spectacular. Their own portraits on the backs of their really impressive books are so—dignified. Somehow, the word “silly” just never came to mind.

Until a week ago. Until the very cold Sunday afternoon when the word “silly” jumped right up off a frozen beach and stared me right in the face.
I had gone down to the Lake Superior waterfront despite below-zero temps and even belower-zero wind chills. I knew from experience that ol’ Gitchi Gami puts on a fabulous show when winter is at its worst. Roiling banks of clouds hugging the horizon, eerie mist hovering above sluggishly choppy waves, sunshine shattering itself against ice-coated rocks—it’s there free for the taking. Just point and click.

So, while most of the town huddled indoors in a frantic attempt at self preservation, I launched myself into our arctic imitation dressed for the occasion: leggings beneath corduroy pants beneath snowmobile pants; sweatshirt beneath down vest beneath down coat. Fleece socks inside pack boots, thick gloves, earmuffs, a heavy hood. And a camera with fully charged batteries to get a head start against power sucking thermals.

I wasn’t disappointed at what I found when I got down there. It was an alien landscape for sure. It was also cold, so bone deep it existed as a life form of its own. Wind screamed at me, clawing at my hood in a vain attempt to find my unprotected face. I’d armored myself too well for the elements to bother me, though. If I moved around too much, I was actually too warm.

The first challenge when shooting Lake Superior from along the Minnesota coast is that you’re always facing south to one degree or another. That means you’re always shooting into the sun to some extent. So, you’ve got that to deal with, plus the need to expose a couple steps up from what the meter says in order to be sure the snow comes out as white as it looks to the naked eye.

I started shooting, hoping like heck that it would all turn out, because of course, in that brilliant light, the LCD display is useless. Holding the camera to my eye froze my own breath onto my glasses, and wind-induced tears froze my eye lashes to my face. Definitely not a Cover Girl moment. But I didn’t care, because no one else was out there to see.

I aimed at the water and the snow, at the sky and the clouds. Click, gasp, aim, click, sniff, aim again, click, meter, focus, click—then turn my back to it, grab for the handkerchief in my pocket, try to smear some of the ice off the lenses, blow my nose, and start over. You see how glamorous this is.

Eventually, inevitably, I began to look down, to concentrate on the little details, on the pebbles held hostage-like by the ice, on the rocks encased inches thick in frozen lake spray. And at the little ice monster.

His hide shimmered with frozen ripples, and he looked up at me appealingly with two tiny ice-hole eyes, his off-center fangs showing in a lop-sided grin. I don’t know how he was made, but he was there, and he was too good to pass up. I decided up-close-and-personal was best.

So, down on my belly I went. Sounds easy, put like that. But remember the layers of clothes. They hamper cold, and they hamper movement. Plus, I have a camera in one hand. And I have frozen rocks and pebbles to kneel on, on my way down. Picture seals bouncing their way along the shore. That would be me.

Once down, I slithered around, focusing on my little ice monster from different angles, gingerly switching positions, snugging up to frozen ground and getting the cold shoulder in return. It didn’t take long to decide I had enough shots.
Lumbering to my feet, I brushed off my pants, adjusted my camera strap, turned around to head back—and saw a guy sitting on a picnic table, watching me.

Since turnabout is fair play, I whipped my camera up and took a shot. Then I walked toward him, and he started to grin.

“Are you happy?” he asked. Since I doubted he was trying to initiate a philosophical discussion out there on the frozen tundra, I volleyed with an obvious question: “Are you taking pictures, too?” He was, and we stood there in near 40-below wind chills and talked about the delights of winter photography.

It was a ploy, of course. I figured if I talked fast enough I’d keep him distracted, and he’d forget all about how really silly I looked out there that day.  

BY Monica Isley - lablover47  

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