I had the opportunity in the past few days to help a couple of amateur photographers solve problems related to digital photography. Just like handling cactus, you have to be careful not to get stuck. The photo below is of a portion of Ron McKitrick’s Hillside Desert Botanical Garden in Yakima, Washington. You can see more photos of his remarkable garden on the Inland Northwest Gardening website.

The first problem was one of deleted files on a camera memory card. The photographer had handed her husband the full SD card from her camera to transfer all 180 or so photos to their computer. He uses Picassa to import photos from the card and saw previews of all the photos on his screen. Thinking all the photos had been transferred he handed the card back to his wife. She put the card back in her camera and reformatted it. That’s a good practice — copy everything to the computer and then reformat the card in the camera just before use.

Unfortunately, when he went back to view the photos only the first nine were on the computer. Apparently all the images weren’t transferred when he thought they were. He was seriously in the doghouse now as the photos included several months of skiing and hiking trips that couldn’t be reshot. I asked her whether she’d shot any new photos on the card since reformatting it. She hadn’t, so there was a good chance the missing files could be recovered.

When a memory card (or disk drive) is formatted all the previous data is not erased. Only the directory structure is rewritten. That means that with the right tool you can often recover deleted files. I recommended that my friend download a copy of Photo Rescue software. I had it on my laptop, but had no way to read a SD card. The program is pretty easy to use and will show you whether your files can be recovered before you have to spend money to register the software and save your recovered files. In this case it took over half an hour for it to recover the files and show thumbnails of all 180 missing photos. After paying the registration fee my friend was able to save all his wife’s photos and put a smile back on her face. There are other software tools out there that do the same thing, but this is the one I keep on my laptop in case I do the same thing sometime (and I have).

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We’re in a period of what passes for miserably uncomfortable weather on the northwest coast.  It’s about 38 degrees, windy, and periods of rain. It feels a lot colder than it really is, colder even than standing around in the snow in the mid-twenties. Days like this seem made for staying inside, which wrecks havoc with any outdoor exercise plan. I did get out three times today, once in the morning for a brisk walk around Cornwall Park while my scanner was busy digitizing slides, then to the post office and an evening meeting downtown.

The weather certainly hasn’t been conducive to photography this week. Not bad enough to look dramatic and not good enough to make beautiful images. Fortunately, the winter blooming shrubs last a rather long time in the cool and damp conditions so there isn’t much that’s pressing in the garden anyway.

While it’s been raining I’ve been busy selecting images for several magazine customers to choose from for future issues. I think my transition to all-digital submissions is nearly complete. Since if one editor is looking for a subject another is sure to seek the same thing in the future, I’m scanning everything that isn’t already digital that needs to go out.  That seems easier for an editor than having to look through both slides and web previews for one story or one issue.

This time of year, especially following several days of heavy snowfall, the color palette is essentially monochromatic. Bare branches exhibit varying shades of gray and muted brown. Snow is bluish-white under cloudy skies and in the shade, or hues of gold under low-angle sunshine. Even the foliage that peeks through the snow is muted in tone — deep green cold-curled Rhododendron leaves, soft brown dry grasses that haven’t yet been buried, and almost-black conifer needles.

I photographed in Coeur d’Alene today, again under gray skies and intermittent heavy snowfall. I revisited a handful of gardens that were riots of color last summer or autumn. Today, I concentrated on shapes and patterns in the structures and bare trees or shrubs. The photo is of a small Japanese Maple.

Tonight, the wind picked up so the trees may be mostly bare on Wednesday morning.  A little sun is predicted, with more snow on the way for the Spokane area.  I’m heading home if I can get across the pass, which was closed all day today due to high avalanche danger.  It’s been a productive three days of snowy photography.

The storm cell that brought deep snow to the area sat over Spokane for nearly 30 hours and dumped a couple of feet of snow. That’s more than people here can remember in many, many years. Schools, many government offices, and some businesses were closed today.

Fresh snow doesn’t look good for very long, so I headed out in the brilliant morning sunshine to visit three more gardens today. The greenhouse in the photo was just added to Sherrie & Ron Guiles’ garden last summer. The tree in the foreground is a cutleaf Japanese Maple, which maintains its characteristic shape even under the thick snow cover.

Walking around in the garden where Ron & Sherrie hadn’t used their snowblower to create paths was challenging because the snow came up to my knees. As before, I had to plan my route to keep my footprints out of future photos.

In one area of the garden the outline of a boxwood parterre was barely visible as a soft raised swirl of snow. Everywhere I looked, the contours and textures that had been so prominent and colorful during the growing season and into autumn were soft, flattened, and muted into shades of blue shadows and golden highlights.

The second garden I visited today is a wildlife garden, and in the winter it is a haven for nuthatches, chickadees, pine siskins, house finches, flickers, mourning doves, and dozens of California quail. Bird feeders hang from many trees, and a large covered ground feeder gives a sheltered place to feed near thick shrubs which offer protection.

I shared lunch with Eva & Del Lusk, enjoying the view out the large windows overlooking the garden and watching the birds. Unfortunately, the birds aren’t nearly as comfortable with a photographer wandering around with a long lens and a tripod. I set up several shots and stood very still and waited for the birds to return, but mostly came up empty-handed. My feet eventually got cold and I gave up.

I’ve been waiting all winter for the conditions to be right to visit several eastern Washington gardens when there’s lots of fresh snow. Today (January 27) I hit the jackpot as Spokane received near-record snowfall of up to 12 inches while I was out photographing. It would have been better if the temperature had been a few degrees colder and snow a little drier, but it was still a fantastic day.

The garden shed shown here is in Cathi and Dave Lamoreux’s back yard on the far south edge of Spokane. The snow in their yard was over a foot deep and getting deeper seemingly by the minute.

Photographing in the snow presents some challenges that don’t exist in warmer conditions. First, I had to keep my camera covered to keep it dry. I used a cheap plastic rain cover that cinches down around the lens and allows me to see the LCD on the back through the plastic. There’s a little hole for the viewfinder, and I operate the controls through the plastic. It’s a bit awkward, but workable.

The biggest challenge is one of planning. With no snow on the ground it doesn’t matter much where the photographer walks, as no evidence remains. But when there is snow, every footstep has to be planned so they don’t show up in some future shot. I find myself spending extra time thinking ahead to what other angles I’m going to want to capture before I start walking around.

When the weather is as warm as it was in Spokane today — right around freezing, staying warm while working really wasn’t much of an issue. Long underwear, rain pants, and a waterproof parka did the trick to stay warm and dry. Basically it’s just like dressing for any other winter outdoor activity in snow country.

I plan to spend another couple of days photographing Spokane gardens before heading back across the mountains. It’s predicted to get colder and maybe a little more snow, so conditions should remain favorable. But the only way to know for sure is to look out the window in the morning.