That’s very cool, Scott. Nice shot.

Nature is beautiful…but I can’t really enjoy it when I’m freezin’ my ass off…

(5 more days to key west.)

Great picture. I once saw a decorative fountain that had frozen. It was just like the water had become stuck in mid air. Quite neat. Unfortunatley, I was not able to get a picture.

Neat shot. It looks as if the water was frozen all at once. Not a scene you’ll see in Texas very often that’s for sure!

The beauty in nature never fails to amaze me, even on a microscopic level… http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos/photos.htm

Nice pic! Winter is cool. I actually like winter. It’s brigthens everything up when some snow falls. Walking and/or driving though becomes an adventure or a nightmare - LOL. Cool that you got the day off work.

You might like Dr. Masuro Emoto. He studies water and emotion together. His research has lead to fascinating discoveries of how water is effected by our emotions. To detect it - he freezes a drop of water. Then photographs it using a microscopic camera. A snow flake forms sometimes during the freezing. Human emotion in water. Look him up if you have 15 minutes or so. It is inspiring.

Cheers!

Lori: Thank you. I find that my enjoyment is blunted just a tad by the inclement weather myself - I don’t think I forced myself outside for a total of more than five minutes getting icicle pictures, including the one above before I beat a hasty retreat for the artificial warmth of the inside. By this stage I imagine that you are on the brink of being in Key West. Enjoy!

Kelly: Thank you! You know, I often see neat things, like the frozen decorative fountain frozen over that you mention. It seems a shame not to be able to capture those in images for later - to which I hope to apply the solution of carrying my camera around with me more often (dare I say, everywhere I go?), in the hopes that when those neat little photo ops cross my path, I will be well equipped to take advantage of them.

Carolyn: Thanks. It does look like the water wash gushing out when suddenly there was a snap freeze. In fact, if I didn’t know better I would wonder if that was a picture of rushing water frozen in time only by the nature of photography itself.

And yes, not something I’ve seen in Texas with any sort of regularity. In fact, it was possible to witness me over the past couple of weeks mumbling “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Texas anymore..”

Thank you so much for the link to the snowflake photos. Those are incredibly beautiful. And it’s amazing to think that we can’t even witness that beauty with the naked eye.

Jessica: Thanks. I’m afraid I can’t share your sentiments about winter too heartily. I’m more of a summer boy (having grown up on the east coast of Australia). The day off wasn’t actually much of a day off - unfortunately I can do about 90% of my job remotely - but it was much more comfortable - PJ’s, blanket, cats and all.

I did some reading about Masuro Emoto’s work. I am not sure I am entirely convinced by the whole premise. I can understand that vibrations from music and voice would have various effects on the physical formation of ice crystals, however my jury is still out on whether emotions themselves (which were not expressed in some vibration causing manner), would effect the formation of the crystals. Its certainly a curious study though. Thanks for that little interesting adventure.

Yes, i agree it is an interesting study. When i was in treatment for addiction we tested the theory with rice. One bowl of rice we hated. One bowl of rise we loved. One bowl of rice was just a bowl of rice that meant nothing nor nothing bad.

The capped bowl of loved rice remained white and wholesome looking.

The capped bowl of hated rice turned black and rotten.

The capped bowl of the rice we ignored turned color to yellows and browns however did not rot nor did it stay white.

Jessica Doyle: Since you first brought this up, I’ve developed on some more concepts about reality that I think make this more acceptable to me as possible. The rice experiment is interesting, I will have to give it a try one day and let you know the results that I get.