Snowfall

Five color negative frames from a Woodbridge, Virginia snow that arrived before the garden agreed to winter.

Belmont Bay, Woodbridge, Virginia, United States / 35mm color negative (stock unidentified) / Snowfall — Belmont Bay Loosies collection, 35mm film archive

The roll opens in a garden that hasn't read the forecast. Red roses in full bloom carry inches of snow like reluctant hats, petals still saturated and open against a pale brick wall. One frame holds them sharp; another lets the camera drift, the blossoms smearing into red and white against the dark grid of a window, as if the cold itself were shaking the lens.

Then the frame widens. A pond at the edge of the Virginia woods sits perfectly still under falling snow, bare trees doubled in the water, the far bank dusted white beneath a sky the color of the film base. It is the quietest picture on the roll, the kind of hush that makes you lower your voice for no one.

The set closes on a beech tree that, like the roses, refused to let go in time — copper leaves still clinging to gray branches, each one wearing its own small drift. The whole sequence is a study in bad timing done beautifully: autumn and winter occupying the same afternoon in Woodbridge, neither willing to yield the frame.

Open the interactive project view

Virginia / Belmont Bay / United States / Nature

Cemetery - A single fall afternoon among old walled stones and white marble rows in Alexandria, Virginia, on 35mm color negative.
Fall Leaves - Three color-negative frames of leaf-covered ground and thinning trees along a Belmont Bay path in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Kodak 200 at Belmont Bay - Golden-hour shoreline frames from Woodbridge, Virginia, where a goose family holds the bank.
Loosies - Orphan frames from the Virginia waterfront, where fog, flowers, and camouflaged moths all practice the art of disappearing.
Same Shots, Two Film Stocks - One evening at Belmont Bay, photographed twice — matching frames from two different color negative rolls.
Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (I) - A color-negative walk through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, from Dean Collection galleries to painted stone.
Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (II) - Neon, marble, and glowing resin traded back and forth through the glass of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
RVA Day Trip - A short color-negative walk through Richmond, Virginia, from new glass to painted brick to late-sixties chrome.

Images

A rose bush with several open red blooms covered in caps of fresh snow, in front of a pale brick wall. — The roses never got the memo. They hold their color anyway, each bloom balancing a crown of snow.

A motion-blurred view of snow-covered red roses in front of a building with dark-paned windows. — A shiver runs through the frame — red blooms and white drifts smearing together against the window grid, as if the cold moved the camera itself.

A close view of a single red rose topped with snow, with more snow-covered roses and a blurred building behind it. — One bloom holds the focus while the rest of the garden falls away into soft white and glass. Snowflakes rest on the petals like they belong there.

A still pond reflecting bare trees on a snow-dusted wooded bank under a gray, hazy sky. — The pond takes the storm without a ripple, doubling every bare tree in silver. The hush here is the loudest thing on the roll.

A beech tree with copper-brown leaves still attached to its branches, each cluster dusted with snow. — The beech kept its autumn too long and pays for it in white. Copper leaves and gray bark, every branch carrying its own small drift.

Snowfall

Related

Images