Ryota Kaji Kajita has taken pictures of ice formations in Alaska that are incredible. Scroll down at this site and you’ll see both contact sheets and individual images.
These are the kinds of ice shots I’d love to get and I’ve come close but these are in another class.
I saw a post about this body of work at Colossal where larger images are posted: Frozen Bubble Formations and Shards of Snow Captured in Alaska’s Swamps and Ponds by Ryota Kajita.
Southwestern, Massachusetts.
I did some shooting with my iPhone 8 on our hike the other day. This is a small rut on the trail with some rather large ice crystals growing in it.
As most folks know, modern smartphones have excellent cameras in them and I’ve seen some amazing images coming from iPhones of all vintages on Flickr and elsewhere. I’ve had an iPhone of one sort or another for years but I’m still not as comfortable as others in using it as a primary camera. Not sure quite why that is, it sure is convenient and easy to carry.
Southwestern, Massachusetts.
Walking back to the truck from our hike up Mt. Race there were some low spots along the trail and a few of them contained frozen puddles. Lines like these are caused by water flowing slowly and freezing multiple times. It’s almost like a recent, short term geologic record.
Schaghticoke Ridge, Appalachian Trail. Bull’s Bridge, Connecticut.
We haven’t gotten out all that much recently so we took a relatively short hike up onto Schaghticoke Ridge, which I maintain for the Connecticut AMC.
The snow is gone and there are pockets of ice in low and shady spots. Ice and leaves always makes for interesting photography so I tried a few shots.
Mattatuck Trail, Warren, Connecticut.
We hiked along the Shepaug River looking for interesting ice. We’ve had plenty of cold weather but the kind of weather that makes good ice is extreme cold, a thaw, then more extreme cold. We’ve sort of had that but not quite extreme enough in either direction (warm and cold).
I did find some nice crystals near the shore and attempted to get a shot. I could not get stable enough to get steady for sharp focus so this isn’t quite as crisp as I’d like it. Consider it a place marker for better ice in the next month (hopefully).
Flickr member Christian BARRET posted this fantastic image of ice in a puddle in Iceland.
Mattatuck Trail, Warren, Connecticut.
This ice is on a small stream feeding into the Shepaug River. The stream doesn’t have a steep grade and this is part of what makes interesting ice formations (slow moving water).
I took too many images during the hour I spent here and many weren’t in focus although with ice it’s tough to sort that out. This collection is a cross section of the different types of crystallization I found that day.
Me looking at ice on the Mattatuck Trail
Mattatuck Trail, Warren, Connecticut.
I usually shoot both RAW and JPEG with my Ricoh GR II and the JPEGs are this high contrast black and white with grain. For the most part I use the JPEGs in Lightroom as a guide for my RAW processing.
This day I somehow had my camera set to make a single file, the high contrast JPEG file. So, these are straight out of the camera and a bit more contrasty and grainy than my usual. I like the images and decided to post them anyway. I have a few hundreds more I did a week later but have yet to process them all yet.
These were shot in a small streamlet that we crossed over with snowshoes. It was a fun day and this is a great new trail for us, very close to our house.
Warren, Connecticut.
We’ve been hiking a new trail near our house called the Mattatuck trail. Just north of the Shepaug Reservoir a small stream runs into the Shepaug River and its low angle and slow enough that in our recent cold snap it developed a lot of great ice formations.
I shot over 100 still images on this small stream but also decided to experiment with video on my iPhone. I’m new at this and so, my panning skills aren’t great but these short videos will give you a taste of what it’s like on this small stream.
I’m pretty sure the bird in the background is a crow that was annoyed at our presence.
I spent an hour rock hopping up about 50 yards on this stream, taking pictures and making these crude videos. It was great.
Consider zooming them out; there should be enough resolution for most screens.
My flickr contact Adam Bliss posted this terrific aerial drone shot looking down at a horseshoe bend in the Cousins River in Yarmouth, Maine.
One of the few reasons I’d ever want to get a drone is exactly this kind of shot.
Richard's Notes 