SNOW SOFTLY FALLING

My wife and I made a decision long ago that we enjoy the dramatic cycle of seasons in the north, so we avoided the rush of our generation to move to Florida or Arizona. I’m paler as a result, but am especially enjoying winters in central Michigan because of the snowfall. In fact, when the fat flakes are softly falling, I will often venture out on foot or in the Subaru to see what I can find to photograph.

The pictures here, taken over the last six years in Michigan, the Canadian Rockies, Newfoundland, Iceland, and a few other places represent my passion for falling snow. I love how the thickly falling flakes dissolve the landscape into what seems like molecules, where I get a glimpse of the fundamental nature of the universe. Nothing is as solid or as stable as it seems, and everything we know and love is made up of infinitesimal and fundamental particles buzzing around each other in the void. My glimpse into the great mystery.

You can click on any of the photographs here to see it larger and to view all of them using the arrow on the right. Each is available for $100 in a 12 x 18″ print that you can mat and frame however you like. Free shipping in the USA and each limited edition cotton print comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and a description of the photograph. Contact me at lee@leerentz.com for information; you can also go to http://leerentz.com for more options, including metal prints.

DEEP INSIDE A GLACIER

Thousands of years passed, blizzards howled over Iceland’s Katla Volcano in whiteouts that blocked out time and place. Uncountable snowflakes fell, dissolving the landscape. Immense compression squeezed the forming ice, forcing out air bubbles and creating a material of intense clarity and glacial plasticity. Gravity took over as the ice accumulated, and glacial ice flowed like a river that ignored time, down the volcano’s hidden ridges, scraping and sculpting the mountain, which was now hundreds of feet below the gleaming ice cap.

When we arrived at Kötlujökull glacier, a lobe of Mýrdalsjökull Glacier, we saw ice that was thousands upon thousands of years old. It ended abruptly at the glacial terminus, which was a sheer wall of ice over 100 feet high. Our small group entered a cave in the glacier, created by a flowing glacial stream and polished by air currents. These photographs represent the incredible sculpted and colored walls of the inner sanctum of the glacier.

Passage into an ice cave in Mýrdalsjökull Glacier on Katla Volcano

A melted vertical shaft, called a moulin or glacier mill, was the most dramatic feature of our ice cave tour

Another view looking straight up the moulin toward the sky; imagine trying to climb out, even with ice climbing equipment!

Bands of scalloped ice in the moulin, with the different colors representing changing conditions when the ice formed and compressed

Polished ice surfaces approaching the moulin opening

Ice fantasy fringed with icicles inside the ice cave

Wall of melting ice and icicles, reflecting the blue sky outside

The highlight of our journey was entering a narrow cavern in the ice and following it into the glacier until we were blocked by a wall of ice. Here Karen Rentz is inside an ice cave channel, formed seasonally by running water, her headlamp and mine illuminating the ice

The ice channel curved and twisted through the glacier

Fanciful textures and patterns of ice, rich with glacial aquamarine coloring

Icicles at entrance to the ice cave, with hardly a hint of what awaits within

The glacial terminus, which we approached and then entered through a small opening

Karen Rentz using rope and crampons to ascend to cave entrance

Adventurers walking toward an ice cave entrance. If you go to Iceland and wish to explore an ice cave, make sure you spend the extra money and go on a small tour led by a leader driving a SuperJeep (the Icelandic name for any really rugged 4WD vehicle). Some bus tours pack people into a large cave along with hundreds of others, and the experience is that of a herd.

Mýrdalssandur outwash plain looking out from the ice cave entrance, Hafursey Mountain. This is where part of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was filmed.

Dramatic entrance to an ice cave in a lobe of Mýrdalsjökull Glacier

We visited Iceland in March of 2018, with the intent of seeing the Aurora Borealis, which we did on three nights, and the South Coast, where these glacier pictures were taken. We also wanted to experience the Westfjords region in winter, which was also spectacular. We rented an all wheel drive Subaru so we could have more freedom of movement and spontaneity than a bus tour allows, and we stayed in modest AirBnBs to keep down the costs. Except for a couple of meals at restaurants, we ate simply, buying from small grocery stores (and Costco!). Our biggest splurges were for two guided ice cave tours, in which a driver and guide using a SuperJeep 4wd vehicle takes visitors to really spectacular places that would otherwise not be accessible. Well worth it!

Most of my work is available as prints on metal or cotton rag paper. To see a large selection of my work go to leerentz.com.

Spring in Seattle

Azalea blooming in early February

2010 has brought Seattle the warmest January we have seen in over a hundred years of record-keeping, which might seem odd to those dealing with record-setting snowfall in more southerly parts of the east coast.  This is an El Niño year, which brings strange weather patterns to the whole Pacific basin and over much of North America.  Our warm temperatures and Vancouver’s trucking in snow for parts of the Winter Olympics are part of this El Niño effect.

As a result of the warm weather, our first sign of spring, the flowering of the hazelnut trees, occurred just about the first of January, and I heard frogs croaking on warm days.  While jogging in Bremerton, I saw the first miniature irises in bloom.

In early February I made two trips to Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum, located along Lake Washington near the University of Washington campus.  The arboretum is beautiful any time, but I especially love the flowering trees in spring, and this was my first opportunity in 2010 to see early witch hazels and azaleas in bloom.  Within the arboretum, the J. A. Witt Winter Garden is the focus for early spring color, as well as bright winter twig and bark colors.

In this portfolio you can see traditional approaches to garden photography–as well as some more impressionistic images that have their own beautiful aesthetic.  Enjoy the spring through my photography, even if you are trapped in a snowstorm!

Persian Violet (Cyclamen coum) around base of Tall Stewartia

Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’)

Scotch Heather (Calluna vulgaris ‘Robert Chapman’)

Early Azalea Blooming

Purple Hazel (Corylus maxima ‘Atropurpurea Superba’)

Chinese Witch Hazel (Hamamelis mollis)

Paperbark Maple bark (Acer griseum)

Impressionistic view of Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick

Orange Beauty Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Orange Beauty’)

Muskogee Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia x ‘Muskogee’)

Plastic Fence and Azalea

Wilcox Footbridge, built in 1911

Paperbark Maple bark (Acer griseum)

Peeling bark, backlit by a low winter sun, of Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum)

Ruby Glow Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Ruby Glow’)

Impressionistic view of backlit bark of Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum)

Bark detail of Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum)

Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) branches casting shadows

Green-barked Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera ‘Flaviramea’) with Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogan planiscapus ‘Ebony Knight’)

Colorful coppiced shrub dogwood (Cornus sp.); coppicing means cutting back branches to the ground each spring, which encourages new twig growth, and new twigs have brighter color

A lavender early-blooming azalea (Rhododendron sp.)

Ruby Glow Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Ruby Glow’)

Another view of Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick

And still another view of Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick

Patterned bark of Hers’ Maple (Acer grosseri var. hersii)

A cherry (Prunus sp.) blooming in early February

Moss on a huge tree glowing under overcast skies

For more information about Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum, go to:  http://depts.washington.edu/wpa/index.htm.

To see my web site, which includes photographic prints for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com

To see thousands of my photographs in large file sizes for use in magazines or other printed materials or electronic media, go to my PhotoShelter Website

January 5, 2009 On Thin Ice

Understanding natural design is a right brain/left brain exercise. We sense beauty and become inspired through the artistic right hemisphere of the brain, and understand the reasons behind natural design through the rational and analytical right hemisphere of the brain.  This is oversimplifying, of course, but it does point out our varied ways of sensing the world.  Van Gogh was undoubtedly right-brained in his perceptions of the world, while the fictional Spock was completely left-brained. When I come upon an element of nature that I don’t understand, my brain searches for reasons behind the beauty that I capture with my camera.   Nature is filled with patterns that are governed by physics and evolution.

I live on small Fawn Lake in the Puget Sound region of the USA, a place renowned for rain. Our maritime winters are indeed moist, with a climate resembling England or Scotland. I maintain a rain gauge each year, and in a typical year we get about 65 inches of precipitation–mostly rain, but occasionally we get snow. In December 2008, 17″ of snow dumped on us, closing schools and businesses and making roads almost impassable right before Christmas, when people wanted to be out shopping. Then our lake froze over.

I was out of town for the holidays, but when I returned, I noticed a strange pattern on the frozen surface of Fawn Lake.  There were hundreds of ice formations that looked for all the world like synapses in the brain: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse. These dendritic (think tree branches) formations each had a hole in the center with branching tentacles radiating out from the center hole. When I photographed them, the temperature was above freezing, and the water in the dendritic formations was liquid. It looks to me as if rainwater and meltwater flow from the tips of the tentacles to the hole in the center. But what caused these holes to begin with? And why are they fairly regularly spaced across the lake? Is water flowing into or out of the hole in the center? This inquiring left brain wants to know, and I would appreciate your suggestions. I will update this entry if someone has a definitive explanation.

This phenomenon has been observed before, and you can see pictures by other photographers from several locations at:  http://flickr.com/photos/91347191@N00/109697496

 

To see a variety of my photographic work, including photos for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com

Click on the photographs below for versions with captions.