Winter will be upon those living in the northern hemisphere in only two weeks. For those who live south of the equator, you will welcome summer. I’ve often said that I love looking at photos of snow-covered winter scenes on my computer in Arizona. On November 19, we had our first snowfall here in Fargo, North Dakota. It snowed, and the wind blew hard all day, but in the end, there was just under one inch (2.5 cm) of snow on the ground. This week’s challenge is to share your photos of what winter means to you. For me, it’s landscape photos, but for you, it might be something creative or exciting that you do in the winter. I could have shared our hiking adventures in Arizona over the years. Snowbirds like us don’t always have a gallery of snow-covered landscapes to share.

For my opening photo, which happened to be taken in early fall, I submit this winter scene from Crater Lake. It wasn’t warm when we started up the mountain; it was cool and rainy. At some point on our journey to Crater Lake, the rain became snow. We didn’t see the lake as heavy clouds in the crater hid the view. While there, I only took one photo and converted it to a high-key black-and-white. I am sharing a few of my favorite winter scenes for this challenge.

This year, we won’t be heading south until after Christmas; the specific date is still to be determined. We often share the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with our daughter, her family, and her in-laws. That was the case on Christmas Day, 2017. We were at her in-laws’ house in Horace, North Dakota, and I looked out the window to see the sunset. I was so taken by the golden tones in the snow that I stepped outside to capture the photo.

Yet another autumn found us at Bryce Canyon for the first snowfall of the season on October 29. Only the day before, it had been raining and foggy. That morning, we woke early to get to the park before sunrise. Before we could leave, however, I had to sweep a good six inches of snow off the car. The sunrise was glorious, and the snow covering those red rocky cliffs created several of my favorite winter landscape views.

In 2018, we were again in Fargo for Christmas, and on December 30, after a fresh snowfall, I ventured down to the river at sunset. As you can see from the tire tracks and footprints in the snow, we weren’t the only ones who wanted to capture the river views.

In November 2018, we had already driven down to Arizona for the winter and stopped to visit our friends Fred and Ellen, who lived in Denver then. We went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. A large glass window wall on one of the upper exhibit floors provided a landscape view of downtown Denver. For this challenge, I used images captured that day to create this panoramic view of the city covered in fresh snow.

Last week, Sofia’s challenge focused on the Five Elements of Wuxing, a Chinese philosophy. Next week, it is time for our annual year-end challenge. In December 2022, the Lens-Artists team introduced a “Last-Chance” challenge. The idea was to review the year’s images that never quite fit our challenge subjects that year. The “rule” is that your chosen photographs must have been taken in 2024 and not have been included in response to our 2024 challenges. Go through your gallery and join us on Saturday, December 14, at noon Eastern Standard Time.

John Steiner