Light from a buried car

That night-time glow
London, ON
January 2025
This photo originally shared on Instagram

The scene: a long-lasting lake effect storm has left a thick blanket of snow along a narrow band of communities downwind from Lake Huron. Ours is one of them.

On the street near our house, my wife’s car sits covered with an obscenely thick amount of the white stuff. My mission is to clean it off and move it into the driveway. Sounds pretty straightforward.

But nothing is ever completely linear when I’m involved. And as I approach the car and ponder how I’ll fetch the snow brush out of the car without becoming a snowman in the process, I hit the button on the key fob to unlock the doors. This turns on the car’s lights, which now shine a friendly yellow and white glow through the thick snow.

I stop myself and just stare at the soft, diffused light. After a few seconds, the lights time out and shut down. I hit the fob again, and slowly walk around the vehicle looking for a fun angle.

I keep at this for a while, turning the lights on, then composing in my mind in the few seconds before the timer turns them off once more. Eventually, my phone buzzes, as Debbie is in the house wondering if there’s something wrong with her car.

So I shoot quickly before cleaning the car and moving it into the driveway, as I should have done first thing. But as my long suffering family knows, I can get hit by what I call a photographic vision virtually anytime. Which means everything gets put on hold while I ponder the possibilities. Eyes are rolled, sighs are heard, and every once in a long while I’ll end up with a photo that freezes the moment and seals the memory.

It’s a ridiculous way to live, but it’s become a bit of a refuge from a planet that isn’t always so clean and pretty. If taking abstract pics in the snow - or wherever else - brings moments of calm, I’m in.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #winter #snow #weather #wx #onstorm #night #stilllife #abstract #photography #apple #iphone #iphone16 #shotoniphone

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