One morning during our visit to Tofino, when I headed outside, there was a heavy frost on the seats around the fire pit. The armrest of the seat had some beautiful ice crystals formed upon its surface. They looked so intricate and crisp. When looking through the viewfinder, you could find yourself unaware of what you were looking at. I liked both the wide “carpet” of crystals as well as looking close in at the details.
Previous posts have included some of the frosty scenes from the beach at Tofino during our visit there last year. Aside from the logs, the strands of kelp that had become washed up on the beach were also frosted. The kelp itself seemed to have maintained its moisture without being damaged by freezing but the surface had accumulated a layer of frost that looked really pretty in the early morning light. As the sun got high enough to warm the kelp up, the frost was soon gone.
While I didn’t get the shots of the trees over the pass on Vancouver Island and I did get some shots from Port Alberni, I did pull off the road as we descended to take some shots across a valley that we were passing through. The local fire station was on a small rise which gave an elevated view of the valley that was still covered in frost. Plenty of farm structures provided a bit of interest to the shot. The wider shot was nice but the power lines which are, no doubt, very useful to the residents were a bit more annoying to the photographer. I wonder which is more important…
Early morning walks after a cold night mean frost everywhere. I guess I am accustomed to frost on hard surfaces but softer items, for some reason, didn’t seem like things that would have frost on them. Plants are not warm blooded so why wouldn’t the frost gather on the leaves too. This is probably obvious to everyone but me but I was quite taken with the frost crystals on the leaves.
Aside from the mere presence of frost, I was also impressed by the shapes that the frost crystals had developed in to. They were quite exaggerated and a decent size compared to the leaves themselves. Since it had been a cold and calm morning, getting shots of the leaves was easier than normal since usually the gentlest of breezes will cause motion in the leaves making a sharp shot hard to achieve. The stillness was my friend (and also made for a more comfortable walk since, without wind, the low air temperatures were not uncomfortable).
Walking along Long Beach in Tofino early in the morning, it was still pretty cold. The lack of wind meant it was perfectly comfortable in the sun but the air temps were low. The result was lots of frost on the tree stumps that were scattered along the beach. The texture of the cross section of the wood was already accentuated by weathering but the addition of the frost provided a bit more emphasis to the surface.
Winter frosts can produce some great patterns of ice on objects. This shot was taken of a wing mirror of a car that had grown some lovely looking ice crystals. RAW can be your friend in situations like this because the reflectivity of ice can glare detail out and RAW gives you the latitude to pull back some of the details. This was taken on the phone, but the detail survived quite well.
One element of shooting at Coyote Point that I particularly like is the way you can get a good view of the undersides of the jets as they come in. The long haul flights often have an added feature. The wing fuel is mostly burnt down by the time they land but there are reserves still in the tanks to cover unforeseen events. Many hours at altitude has chilled the fuel down nicely so, as the plane descends into the moist air over the bay, a nice frost forms on the underside of the wings where the fuel is still sitting.
I have seen this on various jets over the years so this post is a compilation. Some of these shots are recent and some are from older shoots. Rather than show the whole plane, these are focused on the areas where the frost forms. They give you a good idea of the internal structure of the various types involved.
