Day 51: Candle Light

Click on it! you know you want the full view eh? yes, yes you do.

I think I have Frostbite. Its hard to move my cold fingers as i type this. I just got back from taking this picture five minutes ago. I must have wasted upwards of seventy matches. It took about a half hour, and a lot of wiping snow off the candle, but i finally got it! I got the picture i wanted! how often does that happen eh?

So heres the story:
It snowed today, and i woke up at noon. Typical Sunday. My parents were after me all day to finish my homework, which i finally finished at 5:45PM. After that, i looked outside, saw the beautiful blue post-sunset light, and thought to myself, "hey wouldn't the yellow-orange light of a light bulb look great in contrast to this blue light on a snowy day?" The answer: heck yes it would. But as usual, mom shot down my rather risky idea of plugging in a lamp in the snow, despite my argument that putting it on a piece of plastic would protect it. Which it likely wouldn't anyway... So i asked her if i could use a candle instead, since it was snowy and i doubted snow could light on fire. She agreed reluctantly. I grabbed my coat, boots (day 31), mini-tripod, and camera. I now regret that i didn't grab my gloves, but nevertheless, i ran outside with my camera, almost tripped in my excitement, and when i got to the top of the rock in our backyard i set up my camera, set exposure and readied everything, then went back to grab the camera and matches. I then hiked back up the hill to the rock and set the candle down, took another test picture and it looked superb. Then the difficult part began. It was windy, cold, and still snowing. I was soaked, and already had semi-numb hands. So i started lighting matches. Lucky enough, the first one lit and so did the candle (i guess they were all still dry and warm at that point), but not for long. It went out too quickly for me to get a shot of it... So I then proceeded to relight matches, one after another. It got to the point where i was quite frustrated, so i used two matches side-by-side, which worked perfectly. I got it lit again and this time got off 3 shots before it went out (the second of which is the one above). After that i lit about 25 more, trying to locate my self in all manner of positions as to block the cold snowy wind... none of which worked. i only got one more shot with the candle lit, and my leg blocked half of it. I decided it was about time to head back, so i grabbed all the burnt matches and brought everything down, soaked my hands for a minute or so, grabbed my camera card, reviewed the pictures on the computer and here i am now.

So thats my epic story. The longest one yet i do believe, and my hands are definitely starting to feel better. Thanks for reading. Enjoy the snow!