Last winter was one of the coldest and snowiest that I can remember. Here in the UK, we mostly have mild and disappointing winters where dreams of a white Christmas are quickly dashed by the reality of grey, miserable and wet conditions that don’t exactly put you in a festive mood. But about once a decade we get a real good cold snap to create all those postcard scenes we all get excited about. With so much beautiful snow and ice and the glorious golden hours we get during the short days of this season, it would have been a crime for me to not venture out with at least one of my cameras. In this case it was my Bronica SQ-A, loaded up with an expired roll of the original Fuji Velvia (equivalent to Velvia 50 today).

As I’ve said many times before, slide film is my favourite to shoot with its vivid and lifelike colours and the original Velvia is one of the legends second only to Kodak’s Kodachrome. As this film was about twenty years expired, I wasn’t entirely sure of the results I would get but I was very happy with what came back from the lab. This roll must have been cold stored for most of its life, and while I am sure there is a bit of a colour shift to look even more purple, for me it just adds to the character of the images. You get a real sense of how cold it was, as well as the warmth of the morning sun.

It certainly was cold that day, I think it may have even been as low as -10°C which is almost unheard of in southern England. In fact, it was so cold that my water bottle froze in the time I was outside! Needless to say I did wrap up warm, as holding a large medium format camera system made entirely of metal and glass is certainly not a winter warmer. Thankfully this really cold weather meant that the area was quiet, so I didn’t have too many disturbances. Everyone else was tucked away nice and warm in bed.

My favourite images from the roll were of the very first scene I photographed with the first light hitting the trees over the misty river. Although the more I look at the two different frames I captured the more I struggle to decide which I prefer. They were taken about five minutes apart, the earlier one with slightly more subtle colours and more visible mist over the water. The later one is really vivid and intense but with only a hint of that mist. Which one do you prefer? Let me know in the comments down below.

As golden hour continued, I had plenty of time to wonder around and shoot the rest of the roll, though at times I really had to think carefully about how to pick out good compositions from sometimes chaotic scenes. With small plants being covered in so much snow and ice it was a no brainer to bring along my favourite Bronica lens, the 110mm F4.5 Macro, and I am really pleased with how these shots with the rose hips and the ivy came out. Again, I think both images show off well the cold of winter and the warmth of the sun.

This winter has so far not been anywhere near as exciting. Where I live, we haven’t had any snow and even frost has been in short supply. Though in the UK January is usually the coldest month so hopefully I will have more luck in the New Year. I still have plenty of expired 120 slide film that I really would like to shoot in the next few months so I can clear a bit of space. Let’s hope we get at least one day of snow.

If you are interested in having any of these images as prints then please contact me at Greg@gregoryowain.co.uk.

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