Another December image and another aerial makes it to the top 5 of the year. We had an absolutely perfect first snow of the season on December 9th and I went out on the 10th in the morning to capture the results. That’s when I shot the partially frozen image of Redd’s that made it to #7 and this aerial image of Abbot Hall that ended up as my fourth favorite image of 2017.
My original thoughts on this image:
There’s something magical about the first snow of the season. After shooting around town as the snow fell yesterday, I woke early to capture the picture perfect snow in the light of morning. Given the relatively warm temperatures, the snow had stuck to all of the tree branches and I knew it would make for a pretty scene. Also, as we did not have a ton of snow, there would be little of the brown sand littering the roads to ruin the contrast of white snow and black asphalt.
I ended up following the same route as yesterday – shot the Christmas tree boat at sunrise, then Grace Oliver followed by Redds Pond (awesome with some light ice on the water) and then State Street. From there, I decided to stop in front of Abbot Hall and used the drone to capture a shot of the beautiful building made more so with a soft coat of white.
As luck would have it, the sun hid between clouds that helped diffuse the morning light just as I got to this perfect altitude.