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Scenes from Winter Wonderlands

It is not a secret — I am woefully addicted to snowscapes and winter wonderland photos. Give me snow, ice, fog, and gray skies, and I am happy as a clam. I can spend hours in freezing cold, or raging storms without as much as a peep of complaint. What I am terrible at — coming home and editing those photos.

Thankfully, I finally have a handful of presets that make it a breeze to edit and maintain a consistent look and feel in my images. I am going through my archives, finding ones I like, and editing them. Here is a set of four from 2018 and 2019 — the first two are from Wyoming, and the last two are from a visit to Utah just before the pandemic struck.

Photo # 1 (above): Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming: Wires, networks, snow, snowstorms. Some of my favorite things.

Photo # 2 (below): Yellowstone National Park. Lone trees, standing alone, facing the world is a reminder of the need for individual resilience.

Photo # 3 (above): Antelope Islands, Utah. Just another icy road.

Photo # 4 (below): Liberty Park, Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a big park in the heart of Salt Lake City. You can’t tell from the ferocity of the storm. This was a snowstorm on the eve of Thanksgiving back in 2019.

All photos were captured using Leica SL or Leica SL2 camera(s) and the Leica VARIO-ELMARIT-SL 1:2.8-4/24-90 ASPH lens.

January 26, 2023. San Francisco

Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. More....

12 thoughts on “Scenes from Winter Wonderlands”

  1. HI – Am not a critic just a very amateur photographer.
    I really like 3 & 4; they have (imo) an ethereal quality that is still well grounded/connected.

    The first two would make a great diptych, do you print these at all?

    best Michael

    1. Michael,

      Thanks for the kind words. I normally print these at home, but only to see how they look. I don’t have enough room in the apartment to hang a lot of my own photos. I typically put them on a big screen The Frame TV and live with them like that.

    1. Thanks, Peter. I really need to visit Canada soon during the winter and make some decent images. 🙂

  3. Good stuff in those great images @Om; I was sure that between the Grand Teton image and the Yellowstone image, I’d prefer the Teton one. That was until I read your caption involving “individual resilience”.

    I guess that just reinforces something you’ve known quite well: Words Matter. Good to read this photo post, and the other nuggets from your recent email letter. — Best, Doug

    1. Hi Doug,

      Thanks so much for the note here. I am glad you like those images. I am finding images that allow me to unplug more than anything else. I don’t hear anything more than silence for a few brief minutes. Hope to share more photos in days to come.

  4. Interesting. I sometimes edit older photos with my new presets but it always feels like …cheating or even history falsification. It‘s a weird feeling I‘d really like to shake of.

    Anyway, I really like your work, your photography as well as your writing about technology – and the fact that you somehow manage to combine the two.

    All the best!

    1. Hi Hendrik,

      Thank you so much for the kind words on my photos and writing. I hope to find ways to continue doing so in the near future as well.

      As for your comments about “re-editing” your photos, I have found that it is really hard to go back and edit photos from the past with new presets. I always find that my intent at the time of making photos was very different and the new presets or tools don’t really allow me to sync the photo and what my intent was. I really need to get the photos right in the camera to come and play with them at home. And that is why I start afresh. On top of that, I am slow — so I like to ruminate on things a a bit before editing and then finally sharing them.

      1. Om – do you use Lightroom? What tools to manage / edit / store your photography?

        1. Isaiah,

          I don’t use Lightroom! I use Adobe Bridge as library management and Photoshop/ACR for editing. I store photos on local drive backed to NAS to back blaze in the cloud. Photoshop files are saved in Adobe cloud!

          1. Thank you! Your writing alone is spectacular, but the photos are also very moving. Keep going!

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