SNOWPOCALYPSE Part 2, or Snowflakes Keep Falling On My Head

I am calling last Sunday Day 1 of our snow adventures (we got some snow on Saturday, but it didn't really amount to anything). Day 2 was rather unimpressive, with a few light flurries and a lot of melting in between. Day 3 was fascinating - the local school district was scheduled for a late start, but heavy snow showers caused the district to cancel school as middle- and high-schoolers were en route to school, and after some elementary children had already been dropped off at before-school daycare. Some parents were a bit put out about the last-minute cancellation, and understandably so...but what can you do? The heavy snow showers were not in the forecast (the central Puget Sound area was supposed to be in the Olympics' precipitation shadow), so the school district did the best it could.

Once it stopped snowing (about midday) the temps climbed above freezing and the snow that had fallen started to melt and fall off the trees. Undaunted, I went to Grace Cole Nature Park and was able to squeeze out a few pictures as I got very wet from the trees' deluge of snowy debris.

First, a snowy berry bush (I am not sure what kind; I'll look later when it has some leaves). The berries turned out a bit dark, but not so much so that I couldn't fix it in postprocessing.

Next, some more "conventional" forest shots. They ended up looking a bit more monochromatic than I had intended, possibly due to the high contrast between snow and non-snowy, shaded surfaces. I think a lot of them are a bit underexposed, as well. It's easy to underexpose pictures of snow, since the camera will meter for the snow (whose values should in fact be brighter, closer to the right of the histogram if you know what I'm talking about). If I decide any of these pictures deserve serious editing, I'll have to play around with the tone curves in Lightroom to try to bring out the colors. Still, I think they're interesting:

There were a few madrone trees in the park, and since they keep their leaves all year, they looked quite odd in the snow. Definitely worth some more focused work the next time it snows (tomorrow?next...week? month? year? in two years? Who knows).

I thought the way this tree's branches looked with snow on them was very cool, and the suspended fallen leaves added some color contrast. Could have been a bit more pronounced, but hey.

A classic cedar branch shot. I love cedar branches. It was a bit breezy, so most of my shots along these lines were abject failures, but this one ended up acceptable.

Finally, a bush whose brown branches and suspended leaves (not from itself, but from a maple tree) made for an interesting shot.

Next up, I step out of my comfort zone and take some pictures of human creations!