Surprise Ice

Bill Durrence was roaming around Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire in early January, taking advantage of the nice light to make some photographs. “There was a place with the footprint of what had been a huge barn,” Bill says, “but all that was left was a stone wall and two dirt ramps where they’d driven hay wagons up into the barn’s loft.” He climbed up, took some shots of the village below and then came down the back of the ramp as a shortcut to his car. “I saw this neat little ice puddle,” he says, “and I just loved the textures and the flowers caught in the ice. I did a series of shots of the patterns and then did a wider shot to show how small the area was where I had found several interesting compositions.”

Bill shot the ice with a Nikon 1 J1 and the 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 zoom lens. The exposure was 1/400 second, f/5.6 and ISO 1600, with the camera set for programmed autoexposure and Matrix metering.

“I always think of things like this—the surprise of the smallness of the ice area—as teaching exercises,” Bill says. That’s no surprise—as an instructor for the Nikon School, Bill will know exactly how to work a few of the ice photos into a discussion of observation, perspective and composition.

To view more of Bill's photographs, visit his website at www.billdurrence.com.