A Little Bit of Lagniappe

The title for this month’s post is possibly redundant.

Lagniappe, a word with roots in South American Spanish and French, is often translated to mean a little something extra.

So you could argue that I’m saying a little bit of a little gift or something along those lines.

No matter.

My first holiday season in Rhode Island came with snow.

Not a whole lot, mind. Just enough to cover the ground well and coat tree branches, the many wreaths hanging on doors of homes and businesses, and so on.

The icing on the cake to the five months I’ve spent here, indeed.

Naturally I had to go out and photograph while the winter storm was upon us. And I wasn’t the only one enjoying the atmospherics.

One young woman—possibly an art student on her way to or from class—brightly told me while I was moving from one scene to the next that it was a lovely day for photography.

I saw another person later that evening out with their camera. I briefly chatted with him as I was setting up for a shot.

I ended up taking more photos with my phone than I did with my camera.

That’s often the case for me these days.

On this occasion, I decided I’d go through the process of unpacking my gear, positioning my tripod, and all that only when I saw a scene that I thought required it.

Doing so kept my gear relatively dry.

And it gave me more time to take in the weather and scenery.

While the snow wasn’t particularly heavy, it was thick enough to allow me to play around with long exposure.

I’ve seen other photographers use falling snow to great effect in their winter compositions.

Here’s my take on that genre in an urban setting.

Please feel free to comment on the image.

I’ll briefly reflect on what the year has been like photography wise before closing this blog post out.

I think that choosing to share something once a month has mostly been the right choice for me. My free time has been extremely limited over the past two months in particular.

The downside is that I ended up with more photos that I thought were worth sharing than I could post.

There are ways around that, of course.

I can put some of them in my galleries at my website and have done that once or twice already.

I’ll end by saying that I’ve been around long enough to know and appreciate that this time of year means many different things to different people. And that it might not be a happy time for whatever reason.

Nevertheless, I hope that you’ve had moments of peace, joy, quiet contemplation, gentleness, or something more buoyant than burdensome.

I look forward to sharing more photography with you in 2025.