Locked in Ice: A Photo Essay

Here in watery New Hampshire—rich in ponds, lakes, brooks, rivers, waterfalls and swamps—we landscape photographers seek out calm waterholes reflecting blazing autumn maples. We follow the brooks and rivers, shooting them and the waterfalls— small and large—along them. Fascinated by the permutations of water rushing downward among the granite brookbeds, we hone our skills for composing spun-glass images from moving water. Then, in winter, we gear up and get out into the snow.

Once in a while we get a chance to shoot something different. In 2006, the snows of winter held off well into January. The small ponds in the lowlands froze solid, capturing leaves and other forest-floor detritus. The ponds’ icy surfaces were treacherous, and to shoot straight down into the frozen pools, I skittered and dragged my way around on a plastic stool, making myself a human tripod with my booted feet solidly planted on the ice, and my elbows anchored on my knees.

In December 2008, we had a corker of an ice storm, which knocked out power throughout much of the Northeast. The storm was mighty in its destruction: The woods were a jumble of snapped-off trees and limbs, looking like a giant playing a game of pickup sticks. Briefly, before thaw released the trees, which dropped their ice mass in great shooshing cascades, and ice shards crackled and skidded on the forest floor, we got to see the whole landscape locked in ice—nature at its most spectacular.

Writer and photographer Jane Wingate lives in Farmington, NH. Prints of these photos, and of other photos, as well as her collection of essays, The Toilet Papers, Pieces Just the Right Length, are available on her website, www.janewingate.com.