Here is a photo essay I completed for an assignment in Digital Foundations. It tells the story of the Carleton Arboretum in the winter, specifically the people who still wander the trails despite the cold and bleak landscape. I had a stroke of bad luck with the timing of my photography-- the few days and nights I'd set aside to go wander into the Arb looking for pictures happened to be the same few days and nights during which the coldest spell of the winter was to take place. As a result, I learned to perfect the delicate dance of hiding the camera up my warm sleeve and then whipping it out when a subject came along (a definite advantage to using a point and shoot. I don't believe I have any sleeves that could comfortably fit an SLR). Left in the cold, the camera itself will usually suffer minimal damage besides the mechanical difficulties brought about by the lens motor freezing. What really slams the breaks on the operation is what happens to the battery. It dies. And you can't shoot any more pictures. Sadly, that happened a couple times.
Seeing as how this is very much about the Arb in the winter, I tried to vary my shots as much as I could to see if I could avoid image after image of boring white snow. You'll notice that the essay starts and ends in darkness, with what seems to be shots of dawn, day, and dusk sandwiched in between. To be honest, this chronological progression was completely unintentional. I just shot randomly off and on over the course of four days. I think it ended up helping the overall structure, though.
Download TracksInTheSnow2 (6095.6K)
I had no idea there was graffiti under that bridge. I can't even remember what compelled me to go down there in the first place...
