This month’s photograph was taken barely a month ago, yet it has a back story in the form of a lesson learned that I hope never leaves me.   First, there are few preliminary details that provide a reference point to what takes place on Friday, January 25th.    #1, Building a portfolio of winter landscape images has been a goal for some time, most recently Ice and Water have been important components.   #2, my hands, and feet have always given me problems in very cold and windy weather.  #3, back in early December I badly injured my big toe in a work-related accident.  This trip to Indiana was my first time in a loose-fitting sneaker and not in the protective walking boot.

    My friend Peter Bosco made the trip last year by himself to show his portfolio of photographs at the Mid West Large Format Asylum’s annual Inspiration Saturday in Chesterton, Indiana.  Peter had been encouraging me since he came home last year to join him in January 2019.     We decided to only make the 2019 trip if there was no threat of severe weather over the course of the 915-mile trip.  An extra day was built into the trip on the chance there was bad weather we could leave on Friday and drive straight through.  

    Peter lives in southern Vermont and we agreed to meet at another good friend and fellow large format photographer’s workplace in Albany, NY.  I left a rainy central Connecticut at 5 am on Thursday, January, 24th expecting to meet Peter in Albany at 7 am.  About 6:30 Peter calls my cell and says his car slide off the driveway due to an overnight freezing rainfall.  He had to wait for someone to come and sand his driveway and assist in getting his car back on track.  Peter finally got to Albany a bit after 10 am, we soon loaded my SUV with his portfolio and camera gear and headed West. 

    The drive West was fairly uneventful, with only about 4 hours to our destination we stopped just east of Toledo for the overnight.   We headed out Friday morning planning to arrive at the host hotel in Chesterton, Indiana by noontime.  Nothing was planned until the dinnertime meet up with the organizers.   So after checking into the hotel, we happened upon some photographers that I knew from the Chicago area and asked their advice on photo locations close by.   They suggested Indiana Dunes State Park which sits on the shores of Lake Michigan. 

    The State Park was a short drive. I had brought 3 different pairs of winter tech gloves to protect against my hands getting cold.   My good friend and fellow large format photographer Tim Jones has over the years coached me on how to combat cold temperatures.  Tim explained the body has a mechanism to protect our core temperature by diverting blood flow from our extremities to keep our vital organs functioning properly.  Always be properly hydrated and have a light snack Tim said, this would keep the digestive organs working to help generate heat.   

   The outside temperature according to my car was 5 degrees above zero.  Before we left to look at frozen Lake Michigan I put on two pairs of gloves, one over top of the other as the wind was kicking up and would only get stronger as we got to the Lake.  We made the approximate 100-yard walk to the shoreline without camera equipment just to scout things out.  Fairly quickly I spotted this small return flow back to the lake and noticed these jagged shapes of ice I’d never seen anywhere here in the East.   I said, “Peter, I gotta make a shot here”. 

   We hustled back to the car for my backpack and tripod, my hands were already beginning to get cold. I figured it wouldn’t take long to get the shot so I decided not to open the chemical hand warmers that were stored in my backpack. Thanks for that thrifty gene you passed on Dad !   Once back at the lake and trying to get my camera mounted to the tripod screw I could tell my hands were not functioning as I would have expected.   I wasn’t cold anywhere else, not even my feet, very strange I thought.      The wind was whipping at a pretty good rate and I silently wondered if the wind would be too much for the camera to remain still and yield a sharp negative, nevertheless I continued to set up the camera.  

  I decided on a 305mm lens and somehow got it mounted to the front of the camera with the cumbersome 2 layers of gloves.   Turns out I have forgotten my dark cloth back in the car.   The darkcloth goes over my head and eliminates unwanted light so I can see thru the back of the camera to compose and focus the image.  Peter is standing close by watching my frustration level rising quickly and decides to take off his coat to simulate a darkcloth.  The wind is whipping and Peter’s shorter coat was really of no help.   I decided I will go back to the car and get the darkcloth.  I’m walking briskly and about halfway to the car I decide to run, a bad decision.  My broken toe was just out of a walking boot and not ready for the added pressure of running, my frustration level is inching ever higher !  I get the darkcloth and walk back to the lake, by now the pain in my hands is far outweighing any pain in my toe.   

    First look through the camera I quickly see the 305mm lens is too long and decide on the 210mm lens.  Before putting the lens on the camera I try and attach the cable release to the lens, impossible with gloves on and my hands in the condition they were in.  Peter, still close by says I’ll screw in the cable release, he tried, his hands now shaking due to the wind and cold.   Finally, he decides to remove his gloves to attach the cable release.  His bare hands, 20 mph winds, and 5-degree temps, his hands were shaking too much and we decided to simply put the lens on without a cable release.   I began composing the image with the darkcloth whipping in the wind.  The frustration level had now reached a point of some loud adult language directed at the unforgiving wind !  I got the tripod head loose enough to move the camera and compose the picture but had no strength or feeling in my fingers to tighten the camera in the position I wanted.   Thankfully Peter was able to secure the camera in the position I wanted.   I took over focusing the camera and at least secured the integrity of the image remaining in my own mind’s eye.  Throughout this 30 minute ordeal, I continually had to fight with myself by saying “the hell with this, I’ve had enough”.  The following cell phone pix was made when I first got to the lake with no camera and the iPhone still relatively warm.    

    With the photograph composed and focused, I am ready to take the shot and insert the film holder into the back of the camera.   Before I expose the first piece of film I test fire the shutter to listen if it is working properly.   Turns out the severe cold has impacted the accuracy of the three slowest speeds and I am left to improvise.   Without getting too technical I listen to how long the shutter stays open, from that I determine how I should develop that particular piece of film based on a guesstimate of the exposure time.   By now my hands are numb and shaking, there is no way I can trigger the tiny lever at the bottom of the shutter to expose the film.   Peter leans in to activate the shutter while I watch from behind the camera to make sure his head or fingers are not in line with what the lens is seeing.   We expose two separate sheets of film, the first at approximately 1 second while 2nd exposure was at least 1.5 seconds.  I note which film received the 1.5 seconds of exposure and will compensate in the film processing once home.   What I usually do before I tear down the camera setup is to take a cell phone picture of my camera and the general composition of my shot.   I reached in my back pocket for the iPhone and no sooner was it out of my pocket when I saw the power cycle off and the battery dies due to the intense cold.  

    My hands are useless at this point, Peter had to take the camera off the tripod and put things back in the backpack.  All is packed away and we make our way back to the car, still a mystery to me, my feet and core never got cold.  Once in the car, I quickly started the engine and waited for some heat.   I took my gloves off and remember tapping my fingertips on my leg, the fingers felt like they were filled with novocaine.   The fingertips on my right hand looked greyish in color, Peter squeezed the pads of my fingertips and when they did not spring back to their original shape he suggested you’ve probably gotten “frostnip” which is the first stage of frostbite.   The car was warming up and as my hands began to warm up the pain grew much greater than I had ever felt outside !  I still didn’t have enough feeling in my hands to drive safely so we sat in the car for 10 minutes or so, the stinging pain in my hands was something I don’t ever recall feeling that type of prolonged discomfort.   Most of the pain except the right index finger had subsided by nighttime.   Most of Saturday I could still feel pain in the index finger when I put pressure on it, fortunately, that pain went away by the end of the weekend.

   Wintertime is a favorite time of year to make photographs so I was determined to find out what went wrong with my hands.   I was convinced I had a circulation deficiency because my heart rate is in the mid to high 50’s.  I have a good friend, himself a fine photographer who is a retired Doctor.   I emailed Paul with this story asking if I should see some type of heart or blood circulation Dr. for a consult, he indicated there was no deficiency due to heart rate or circulation.   So, I’m left to conclude the deficiency I have resides above my shoulders and my wintertime photography will require a prescription of simple common sense going forward.

   Researching frostnip & frostbite once home I learned the body has a mechanism to protect our core by restricting the blood flow to the main arteries feeding the hands to ensure our vital organs remain warm and functioning properly.  These main arteries feed into smaller arteries that run the perimeter of each of our fingers as seen in the photo. During the warming process, it is the blood rushing back into the hands that causes the intense pain I experienced.

   A quick check of a wind chill calculator @ 5 degrees with a 15 mph wind feels like -13 degrees !   It’s interesting to note, less than a week later the Mid West experienced ambient air temps in the area I was in of minus 27 degrees, that wind chill comes in at minus 53 degrees.   As I think about it now, I’m fortunate not to have attempted the photograph under those conditions, as I might have made the same ill-advised decision and come away with a much different story to share.

 The Sunday 18-hour drive home thru lake effect snow is a story unto itself !!