UKRAINE
Wintering Chronics: Sunrises and Fogs
And beauty cut through the hopelessness
Winter is always my least favorite season: least travels, least photos. Even better winters finished only with a feeling of relief. Therefore, I rarely do photo notes about this season, but I’ll try now without delay. Or this winter gave me really beautiful moments (not pleasant, though), or I took photos of anything while I had such an ability.
The first snow appeared in the last days of November, which is rare compared to the previous snowless seasons. I don’t like it, as almost all winter elements. It means only cold, high humidity, and slippery roads. In addition, I constantly realize that somebody sits in trenches 24/7 in such weather. Perspectives joining them don’t gladden me, as I need lengthy repairs with teas or cold medications even after ordinary long winter walks.
It’s easier to accept the cold from which you can hide anytime. And even to see some beauty in it.
Especially when all is white in fresh snow or light haze, like when I met once in a forest park.
A barcode:
Very rarely, everything becomes white because the temperature jumps around zero. With my luck, I’m usually out of the city or work hard on such days.
So this winter it happened on the working day. I could take only a few photos on my way to the office. Including trams, as without them?
And I also ran near the office during the lunch break.
One morning, so thick fog appeared that I ran to the park immediately. Such an opaque fog appears one or two times per year, and I can’t remember when it joined with snow that all drowned in endless white nothing.
All ordinary and banal park landscapes became mysterious and unfamiliar. Like a mirage from which not everybody returns. I returned, though, but was late for work.
I noticed this perspective over a year ago but could only take this photo that day. There’s nothing special in typical weather. But what minimalism appears when the lake’s opposite shore isn’t visible?
In some lazy cases, I didn’t need to go anywhere to take photos. A view from my windows helped out — the main thing was not to sleep through the moment. Like an exciting sunrise:
Or how the morning frosty haze smokes on the horizon under the unexpectedly bright sun rays.
Winter sunrises are always the lottery; weather forecasts rarely guess when the sky will be interesting. I forced myself to wake up early only a few times, and not all of them were successful. I didn’t regret myself on the coldest morning of this winter when it was -16 C. However, with fresh, innocent snow — I even had to trample the forefront by myself.
Caught the moment when the sun shone right through the dome of an unfinished church.
Finally, I trapped a gorgeous sky on January 31. Remarkably, the thaw began the next day and a wakeless greyness with it. Most photos here are from January; February was strange and incomprehensible.
Even mild frosts lasting several days were enough to turn the lake into a pedestrian area. But I didn’t risk going too far.
Reeds…
And soft morning colors that I love so much.
There were fucking lot of ravens, but I caught them only once in the frame.
Some berries found on the same morning:
Something went wrong with Harry Potter.
I returned to making snowmen after a many years pause. The first one had dark circles under the eyes, similar to mine — a kind of self-portrait.
Also, I couldn’t ignore trams during snowfalls but always forgot the camera. My smartphone is pretty weak for night lighting.
The biggest macro photography of a snowflake that the smartphone could do:
I finally visited one of my favorite spots above the Pivdennyi Buh River in the snowtime.
And, as I said, it all melted in February.
And the winter became as I usually expect it: wet and gloomy, where it’s hard to find bright colors.
To be honest, greyness prevailed before this as well. Almost all these photos were taken in literally a few good days. It felt like so little in the whole three months.
The sun’s appearance (at least in the form of a contour behind the clouds) could be considered quite an event.
Any beautiful sky was rare as well.
But the spring approach felt in the air: with warmer temperatures and later sunsets.
Maybe winter will become a silent time for walks with coffee again. Someday.
Someday, it will be associated with purely urban comfort, where artificial lighting and bright decorations compensate for the lack of sun and colors. According to the photos, it may seem so, but everything was a deception assembled from disparate fragments, a simulation of a past peaceful life that will never return. The end of winter always brought relief, at least because of the warmer months approach, but not this time. I don’t see any light ahead for the first time in my conscious life.
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