March 5th, 2023.
In the past two years (2023 & 2024) I’ve been getting back into skiing. It’s something I did countless times growing up on the east-coast. With my cousins or friends of mine we’d rip up to Pat’s Peak, Loon & Wachusett as often as possible. However, in college that habit more or less dropped off (except for a brief ski in Zermatt, Switzerland in 2019).
Then in 2023 I began skiing again with some friends of me and Sophie’s and the return has been incredible! We’ve had multiple beautiful days as well as some not so beautiful days. This was one of those beautiful days. The day prior (a Saturday) had been a powerful blizzard which tore through the Killington area of Vermont. It was bad enough that we decided to stay at the house that day and ended up skiing Sunday instead.
The weather was incredible, and conditions were perfect – especially near the summit. Towards the base when we started the conditions were good. It quickly began getting skied off and we began going higher up the mountain.
This first shot of mine was just after we got off the char-lift, roughly halfway up the mountain. The second you got off the lift you were presented with a fairly steep cliff-face. The cliff acted as a wind tunnel, and the wind coming off of it was relentless. We skied further into the tree line and as we did approach and the wind quieted down, I took out my camera to capture the image below.
After running that back a few times we decided to head up to the summit of the mountain for a beer and lunch. We ate well up there after fighting to get a table but eventually it was time to leave the warm confines of the summit lodge and hit the slopes again. As we skied down from the summit, I found my favorite composition of the entire trip. There was a set of trees who stood out from the others, and I was able to take the following two images.
I love this first image – I find the colors and the shift to darker and darker blue as you get farther back in the scene soothing and incredibly complimentary to the tones that the snow was throwing the rest of the composition into. But then – I flipped my camera vertical and captured what I consider to be the stronger image of the two. I scooted a bit farther to the left and closer to the scene better isolate the tree on the right and fired.
I actually love this image so much that I even included it in My Best Images Of 2023. The rest of the day was equally enjoyable but I did begin to focus more on skiing after that point and less on the photographic pursuit of the day. I felt satisfied after getting this image.
Thanks for reading this reflection of mine & I hope to see you in the next one!
P.S. I have something big in the works right now. Make sure you check back here in around two or three weeks’ time! You won’t want to miss it.