This is kind of a bleak time of year for photo enthusiasts.  What little foliage exists from last year is brown.  The nice, white blanket of snow is gone, and the ground beneath it: brown.  Even the water of the Heart River, where I’ve been poking around lately: brown.  Sigh.  So I went back a couple of months to find these photos from the capitol area.

It’s nice to see such brilliant color disrupt the drab colors of a gloomy North Dakota winter day.  It’s going to be a while before we’re treated to lush green again, although I did see plenty of green blades of grass when walking along the dike in Mandan last week.

Spring she comes, spring she teases…but oh, how winter freezes.  We’re in for a cold snap again after being treated to sunny 70s.  Bummer.  Hopefully we can have a glorious Spring soon…this past winter seemed far too long!

Now’s that time of Spring where we photographers look for piles of ice in all the right places: places where water slows down and/or takes a curve, in the shade, or both.  As the rivers clear themselves they push ice further downstream and off to the sides, and an opportunistic photo enthusiast can easily find themselves some chilly photo subjects in stark contrast to the beautiful Spring skies and warm sunshine.

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”  – Charles Dickens

Now’s the time to photograph what’s left of the ice before it remains!

I found these along the river the other day, along with a couple hundred of their friends.  The intricate shapes and grain of these ice crystals were pretty neat, even if they were uncomfortable to hold for more than a few seconds.  They almost look like clear wood chips!  How fun would it be to have a playground lined with them?

Simple Minds gives me the musical reference for this post title.  I was out on the Heart River last Friday for a while after verifying that the ice disc I photographed earlier was still frozen solid.  I had a photography pal with me, and we decided to work the river for a little bit.

I found a couple of pretty neat ice chunks protruding from the river, and the lighting conditions were changing every few minutes or so. The coolest thing about the ice was the lines where it had melted and frozen. The photo above kinda shows some thick “veins” running down the slab.

In the shade, and with a little off-camera flash, you can see a couple of sets of striation lines in this ice.  Some run vertically, probably from melting, and others run horizontally, most likely as the slab froze thicker and thicker. But something else about this feature caught my eye.

My boys think this looks like some sort of sci-fi sword. Maybe it looks like a shark fin to some. I was just glad to find some sort of neat looking protrusion that wasn’t discolored by river sand. I decided to play some angles and experiment with off-camera flash while the lighting did various things.

Looks like a sculpture, doesn’t it?  Maybe a golf trophy or something.

The brilliant blue sky turned to gray and even a little purple at times (we dudes don’t know terms like “lavender” or “periwinkle”.  With that, the reflectivity of the ice changed (along with the color of the slab).

Here you can see the lines of the slab. It looks like a chandelier – a five hundred pound one, at that.  I tried time and time again to do them justice, but I simply could not.

I feel like I won a Longest Drive contest or something!

And then the blue skies came back.  We sauntered up river a little ways to start pointing the cameras at some gnarly trees or something, and it’s a good thing we did. The standing water atop the ice was encroaching upon our position, meaning that things were starting to melt.  I’m not one to take a lot of chances on river ice. Even though the slab we were on was incredibly thick, I wasn’t about to let my guard down.

Soon there won’t be any river ice to photograph. I have to say I’ll miss it a little now that I’m getting more camera time again, but then again…not so much.  It’ll be back before we know it.

So I couldn’t help  but pay the Heart River ice disc a visit, since, I heard that it was frozen in place after the recent cold spells.  That’s true; it’s frozen in place.  But I have a hunch.

I spent a couple of hours in this area taking various ice and tree photos, and saw the area of open water spread dramatically.  The friend who was with me surmised that the area will be thawed in the next day or two.  With low temps remaining above freezing, I think he’s right.

The thinnest part of the ice will melt first, and that is the perimeter of the disc.  If that holds true, the thing could be back spinning before we know it!  Only time will tell.  Whether it spins again or not, the ice in this area won’t be around much longer..