Zen and the Art Of Trying Not To Freeze Your Ass Off

Blame it on climate change. The recent winter shift in weather patterns up here has been pretty dramatic, and not in a warming direction, either. Quite the contrary; it's a mini-Ice Age, a snowpocalypse, and downright pleistocene if you ask me. Cold, in other words, and I didn't sign up for this, but here we are. We'll make the best of it, come hell (oh, I wish) or high water.

So with temperatures that never got above the teens, my friend Dan and I took the notion that it'd be a good idea to drive up into the Columbia Gorge and find some frozen waterfalls to photograph. We bravely sallied forth, bundled up like a couple of four-year-old's, with all the photo gear we could muster. Which, between the two of us, is considerable.

The waterfalls in the gorge are an incredible site any time of the year; they wax and wane with the seasons and the rainfall. I've photographed them many times, but never in a nearly-frozen state like this. It presented some interesting challenges. We hiked (or, rather, skated) on the lower trail up to Latourell Falls, picked our way carefully down to Bridal Veil falls, and then coasted into the parking lot at Multnomah Falls. Somewhere in the mix we found an inviting brew-pub in Hood River to thaw out. Ok, so it's not the Shackelton expedition. Give me a break.

But you know me, I have to make every excursion into something more personal, more intense, than just a cruise with a camera. I want to bring the camera up to my eye and and lose myself in the moment -- in this case, an extremely cold moment, but a spellbinding one nonetheless. The swirling mists at the bottom of the falls were instantly freezing on our lenses (and my glasses) so I know that I was sometimes shooting on faith alone. Therein lies the beauty of the motions.

And truth be told, I love shooting in gray and inclement conditions. Let me rephrase that: it's not that I love actually shooting in them -- I take my creature comforts seriously -- but I do truly love the photographic possibilities inherent in the gray skies, the rain and the fog. Add to that snow and ice now, too. A nice, warm day presents few challenges physically or photographically, and for all their discomforts, the frozen waterfalls quite literally took my breath away. It was a rare visual feast.

Shackelton would have been proud.