Reflected Light on Snow

A photograph of snow is rarely a photograph of snow. Snow is, optically, a mirror — it reflects whatever is being thrown at it: the warmth of last light, the cobalt of a winter sky, the green of a stand of pines fifty yards uphill. The question for the photograph is never what the snow looks like. It is what the snow is showing you.

On a cold afternoon in 2019 I worked a field below the Maroon Bells for three hours and made one frame. The snow that day was reflecting two things — the late gold light from the west and the deep blue of the eastern shadow — and the photograph is, essentially, a record of those two colors meeting in a place where they are normally not allowed to meet.

Look at the snow, then look up, then look down again. Whatever you are seeing the second time, you were not seeing the first.