Jokul Frosti or Jack Frost to you and me, painting the trees with a deep hoar frost on a dull old day. Don't be a fair weather photographer as many of the best opportunities for interesting pictures present themselves in less than clement weather.
On this particular uninviting, dull, damp and literarily freezing day I could have stayed cozy indoors drinking something warm and cheering in front of the fire.
Instead I chose to wrap up well and venture out camera in hand with a zoom lens attached so I did not have change lenses in the freezing cold.
Apart from ending up with frozen extremities and the desire to rush back into the warmth of the cottage we were staying in, I was rewarded with a goodly set of, at times, almost surrealist pictures of the hoar frost on the shrubs and trees taken in the gloom.
The term "hoar frost" comes from the Old English meaning of frost resembling an old man's beard and it is ice needles that form directly on below freezing objects like shrubs and trees during the winter on damp days.
Hoar frost is much more rare and photogenic than standard frost that forms on days when the air is dry.
Hoar frost however formed here because the trees were already covered with ordinary frost from the day before thus were still below freezing on the surface and moisture rolled into the areas while the air remained extremely cold. Bingo, hoar frost.
Even better, the following day, when I took these pictures, we had a double hoar frost - this one on top the one from the day before. Good old Jokul Frosti.
Here we go again, one of the biggest ingredients that any photog needs in their work? Yep luck. Plus the determination not to be just a fair weather snapper.