Photography: Winter

I have just started a photography challenge where every month we are given a prompt to photograph, this months was winter. My first thoughts were ‘Winter?.. you’ve got to be kidding me’. Don’t get me wrong I adore winter. Snuggling up under the covers and watching tv with a hot tea in your hand, hot chocolate, beanies. It is ultimate tv weather. There’s just one small problem about this prompt, I live in Australia. Why is that a problem you may ask? Well, unlike you northerners in the other hemisphere we are smack bang in the heat of summer. We have actually just finished our third or fourth big summer storm, in fact we just had two cyclones tearing up the country at the same time. Just before that we had a month of disgusting humid heat. So my problem all month was… how do I take photos of winter in summer Australia?

My first thought was to show you guys of winter in Canada. I spent the Christmas of 2013 up there with my family (which I totally wrote a blog post or two about). This is a true winter. Layers upon layers of clothing, surrounded by snow. The bloody trees are frozen. It is cold, and wintery. 

However, I don’t want to be using all of my Canada photos. I really want to show what winter is like where I live (Brisbane, Australia). So I’ve had a rifle through all my photos (as I really can’t take any now) and realised just how hard this is, we don’t have snow, we don’t even get under 0 degrees (celcius, Americans, celcius). We sure don’t have ski mountains anywhere in my State. It just gets a little chilly. I mean seriously, we aren’t the stereotypical winter. Below is a photo of me on top of a mountain in the middle of winter.

The only way you can tell that this is the middle of winter is by looking at my legs.

My, my, what marvellous goosebumps

And again, when I went to the Splendour in the Grass festival it was actually in the middle of winter. The only way that you can really tell this is because I’m wearing jeans, a jumper and holding onto a jacket.

Really apart from that there’s very little way to show what winter looks like. I could totally throw in a photo taken in the middle of summer and you’d have no idea.

Hint: It’s this one

We really don’t have a stereotypical winter. Generally the biggest difference is the temperature and therefore what you’re wearing (however we still do get those silly people who wear incredibly short shorts in the middle of winter and I don’t understand how… or why). It’s generally much nicer to be outside in winter (actually any time of the year bar summer). You get to rug up in warm oversized jumpers and wear beanies. However, the only downside is that because our summers are so hot most of our houses are built to accommodate the heat and not the cold. I’ve heard that people from places that have a real winter can sometimes feel cold much more than they expect. This is because many houses don’t have a heating system. In my family we heat up a room when we need it (on portable little heaters) so whatever the temperature is outside, it’s like that inside. And whilst 7C isn’t that cold compared to some, it sucks to sleep in that.

Such cold

The biggest difference in terms of photos in winter and summer is the summer storms. Generally our biggest and most devastating floods or storms are in the middle of summer. Which means everything looks like this for a few days