Ice & Everything Nice

Hi there! As you may have heard, there was a big ice storm in Ontario this past week. I'm sure you have all seen pictures of it on every single social networking site out there. Now it's my turn to join in the bandwagon of ice photogs ;)

The ice storm started on the evening of December 21st and by the next day (December 22nd, which is also my birthday) everything was covered in ice. I have never seen anything like it. Heck, it was the best birthday present I could have gotten! I've been living in Canada for 13 years now and I've never witnessed anything so beautiful and destructive before. So here it goes! 

The branches on my front yard looked like this.  

 Ice cream sundae anyone? 

 Globules of ice covering our spruce tree. 

It was exciting. 

Here's an attempt at macro; turned my lens backwards and shot through it. 

Nothing escaped the ice, every single branch was covered by at least a centimetre of it. 

Oh no, I'm already starting to run out of captions. 

Self-explanatory fire hydrant shot. 

Lateral view of the fire hydrant? I am really terrible at coming up with captions. 

 My mom taking part in the photography fest outside. 

 The BlackBerry camera is actually not half bad. It's very snappy and quick. 

 The whole street was blanketed by ice, including every square inch of the road. Thankfully, the trees in our street were relatively small and young--not too many casualties there. 

As you can imagine, driving on this is not a good idea. 

Branches embedded in ice. 

Icicle farm.  

A peek at my backyard through the lattice.  

 Loved seeing these buds, leaves and branches covered in ice. 

Obviously, I needed to show you pictures of my iced-up car. 

It should be self-explanatory that we could not open the door. 

 We went out around town to take some more shots. The first place we went to was the Riverwood Conservancy. 

Look at all those icicles on the beams.  

 They had a garden within the conservancy. 

 Loved how the ice preserved the plant. 

It kind of reminded me of coral reefs.  

How to get out of the ice dungeon?  

Here are some mandatory portraits with trees. 

I think this was my favourite plant to photograph. Loved the colours. 

 Upshot of the plant, possible thanks to wide-angle goodness. 

 Nature's chandelier. 

We left Riverwood Conservancy for Kariya Park.  

Loved this a lot. 

 This is actually the first time I've gone to Kariya Park. 

 A fellow photographer (a.k.a. stranger) that I took a picture of through some branches. I like the composition. You can already see from this shot the damage the ice did to the delicate trees in this place. 

 Some surviving Japanese Maple leaves. 

 Mi parents. 

 Couldn't decide which shot I liked more. 

 A fallen tree blocking the bridge. 

Kariya Park is pretty much located downtown Mississauga, hence the apartment building at the back. 

 Photogenic as usual. 

 It surprised me that these leaves remained green in the winter. 

Fin. 

While the ice storm brought awe-inspiring beauty, it also brought massive destruction across the province that I could not document. As many as 250000 customers were left without power in the GTA. Even now, there are still 50000 customers without power. Massive trees were brought down, power lines too. People resorted to heat their homes with coal BBQs which resulted in numerous carbon monoxide poisonings. Events like this serve to remind us that we are always at God's mercy. 

That is something that we should never forget!

-e.m.