Photo of the Day — Horses in the Snow

It’s the first day of winter in New Zealand today, so I’ve posted this. The day this photo was taken was a rather special and magical one for our family. My wife being from Trinidad and Tobago, and my three girls having been largely brought up there — one of them was born there —the opportunities of coming into contact with snow had been few and far between and limited to our time spent in England. Even then, we lived on the south coast, not known for its snowdrifts. During a winter holiday in the South Island, on the road to Queenstown, we suddenly and unexpectedly hit snow falling heavily. I, who have seen plenty of the stuff before, had never seen it fall so heavily. It went on for a few hours transforming the countryside into this fantasyland the kids and Roslyn had only ever seen on Christmas cards or in the movies. It was like a scene from Narnia. Before too long we came across a road block, the police not letting anyone drive on towards Queenstown without snow chains. Our rental car had them in the boot/trunk, but putting them on I found impossible and we had to go back to the town of Cromwell to get a garage to do it for me. Once that was done we carried on our way, transfixed by the amazing snowy landscape and falling flakes. We came upon a field, with a small herd of horses loose and running around, prancing about as though they were as excited by the snow as we were. We pulled over, climbed through a deep ditch and hung on to the fence watching them playing. This was my favourite of the many pictures I rattled off. The two horses seem so content in the drifting snow, and the picture is nicely balanced by the wintry trees.  I used a 70-22mm zoom with a shutter speed of 1/80th second to bring out the blurring motion of the falling snow. Although the horses were dark brown, I preferred the black and white treatment as that is how I remember the almost monochrome scene.