Last weekend’s walk at the lake was chilly and a little dreary. The sky was white and it felt like the calm before the storm. In fact, it was the calm before the storm as six inches of snow blanketed the earth by the next morning. 

I made a number of pictures with my iPhone anyway, appreciating the starkness of the landscape and thinking the images might be interesting when transformed into black and white. 

Turns out, I was wrong. They weren’t at all pleasant that way.

However, I did fiddle with them and warmed them up to give some new life – or any life at all, really. I’m not especially fond of heavily edited photos and usually favor the documentary approach but this saved the entire collection from deletion.

The above image of the bridge turned out especially nice. 

I also liked this one of the icy water.

And this one of another bridge.

This image of the geese reminded me of a story from Fried Green Tomatoes about some ducks caught swimming in a lake when it suddenly froze over. They took off and flew away with that lake. To this day it’s somewhere in Georgia. Or so the story goes.

The sight of them all gleefully splashing, diving and taking flight made me wish for my camera with the long lens.

This exercise with the photos reminded me that circumstances are not always as we want them to be. The fact that the sky is gray doesn’t make it a bad day. It does mean we have to work a little harder to find the beauty and the good. 

And it’s possible that these bland days exist to make us appreciate the sunshine and blue skies better. Here’s to the hearty souls who can at least try to find goodness in every day.