Berry frosting

I took my camera with me today when I went out to get lunch, figuring it would make for a nice change to do some outdoor photography someplace other than the area behind our office building. I had a vague notion of taking some landscape pictures, so I switched to my wide-angle lens before I left.

As I drove over a bridge crossing the Battenkill down on Union Street, I noticed that a lot of ice had formed along a fallen tree, to the point where it almost looked like a curtain—albeit a very short one—hanging between the tree and the water. Since there was a safe place to pull over close by, I decided to take a closer look:



Since I was already at the river's edge, I scanned along the bank to see what else might be interesting to photograph—these ice columns certainly filled the bill:



Then, I finally took a good look at the berry bush I was standing next to and realized that just about every surface facing the stream was covered in hoar frost. The combination of the fern-like ice crystals and the red berries was, as you can see, quite striking:



The biggest challenge (other than keeping my footing on the short but steep slope) was finding spots where there was something in the background other than snow so there'd be a bit of contrast:





You can't see much of the ice crystals in this shot, but I liked the asterisk-like formation of the berries on the left:



A closer look at a few berries:



And one last group shot to close things out: