Barely Worth Mentioning
This isn't my typical landscape photo but I couldn't resist making this image. We had two winter storms the week before Christmas. All anyone could talk about was the second one, the big one! More than a foot of snow would be coming in that second storm and you would have thought we had never had a snowstorm before. The first one was completely overlooked... less than three inches coming, rain for most people, and it would be barely worth mentioning.
And sure enough it was raining where I live during the first one. But something made me leave the house and travel thirty miles north to where the snow was falling. I was glad I did! It was snowing wildly - big wet flakes, obscuring much of the landscape, and coating everything with a thin, white layer of snow. I ended up making several nice images from this storm that was "barely worth mentioning" and exactly none from the big one!
As the first storm was ending, I thought I was done for the day. I was driving some roads in the foothills where they blend into the first of the ridges that begin the southernmost mountain range in PA. And as I crested a small hill looking toward the mountain, I brought the jeep to a quick stop. There, in front of me, was a scene that looked like it was from the movie Fargo - or something like that. Quick moving mist from the clearing storm was riding along the mountain ridge. And this fascinating line of utility poles - each one different from the others and each one wet on one side from the storm - framed a red barn in the distance. It took a lot of very small movements of the tripod to get the barn in the right spot and every pole in the right spot.
I loved the peculiar feel of the image and thought to myself - this is really going to be great when I come back in the big snowstorm! I came back twice - once as the big storm was just beginning and once after it was done. And you see which image made the final cut - the one in the storm that was barely worth mentioning! :)