Let It Snow

One of the most dreaded things a newspaper photographer can hear is "Get me a weather shot!"

Yes, the dreaded weather photo. Sometimes we get the task of getting the weather photo whether there is weather or not.

It's something that can take you half a day to execute if the odds are against you , and less than an hour if all the cards are stacked in your favor.

Our current arrangement in cold weather situations is that we will drive up to the chain requirement in the local mountains and no further. Which suits me fine. So on this partly cloudy Saturday, I made my way up to Oak Glen where I would find mostly clear roads and no chain requirement. I like Oak Glen, as it provides me with a fertile landscape that really doesn't look like Southern California but some place else, far away.

I often love to shoot snow because of the potential to capture what amounts to a thickly painted oil painting filled with Titanium White and Payne's Grey. I can't resist finding the dormant trees contrasting to the white sheets of non-color. Today my inclinations were satisfied and I quickly found an apple orchard that seemed to be in some kind of snow apocalypse. It took a few frames, but finally a slow moving car made my photo complete as I weighted my composition to exploit the bleakness of the snow.

I next made my way to the Oak Tree Village where I found a lady digging out her business associate on her way into work. As I talked to the ladies, after some Good Samaritans dug out the driver, I found out that it was the first time Oak Glen had been snowed-in in about 35 years. A little news hook was helping my weather hunting right along.

But I still needed a lead shot with a real human element. As I walked around the Village I saw a man in Western gear make his way across the main drag of the Village. He provided a nice scene setter photo with his overcoat, cowboy hat, and boots. "This could work," I thought. He looked like he was out of some kind of rare Western movie where the director had ordered frozen tundras instead red and yellow open plains.



It was then that I decided to make my way across the street where I had seen families doing some sledding with their kids. Its always nice to explore all your options before you leave a scene and this would be my last look at this situation before I made my way back to San Bernardino. As luck would have it I found plenty of families to choose from: a man and his wife, a group of friends, a young couple with their infant boy.

Then I spied them. My shot of the day: a father and his three boys sledding away. I quickly introduced myself during a break, got a quick okay from dad and prepared myself for their next run down the slopes. As the boys dog-piled on their father's back, I knew if this worked out I would have a Page One photo.

Nothing tells a story like the faces of human emotion.
In an instant my cowboy, my digging out shot, and my frozen apple orchard all fell to second place to the dad seizing the day with his sons. What a perfect way to capture the mood of probable Inland Empire readers who were ready and waiting for a break in the rain and snow.

It was as if the photo was saying, "It's okay to come out and play!" "Its not so bad!" "You don't need to stay locked up in your house!"

It was a nice reminder that sometimes the forecast can be bright and sunny even on a cloudy winter's day.