If you search for pictures of Bow Bridge in Central Park, you will find an endless supply of images taken from this exact point of view. The only differences will be the weather, the lighting, time of day, and whatever the photographer does to make the shot his or her own.

I have been wanting to get some shots of Central Park covered in snow for over a year now, and it’s been tough getting the correct conditions for me to get my shots. Midweek snow does little for me because of work. Last winter we had nearly no snow at all. Too much snow and it becomes hard to get from my home in Queens to Manhattan, too little and you do not get the proper coverage. Saturday night it started snowing just before bedtime, which I had not been expecting. I checked the forecast and it was supposed to end around midnight to 1 am, but start up again in the morning with light flurries. That represented an ideal scenario for me.

As it turned out the morning flurries never arrived, which left me with a slightly less than ideal amount of coverage but still something I could work with. My entire kit consisted of the new Fuji X-E1 and a single lens, the 18-55 zoom (with a 1.5 crop factor effectively 27-83).  It was truly a delight to go out with no big DSLR and no tripod.*

* I sold my Micro 4/3 gear to switch to the Fuji mirrorless system. Someday I’ll get around to explaining why, but for now let me just clarify that I think Micro 4/3 is awesome, I just wanted the Fuji more. 

Anyway, back to the bridge and the photo. Like I said there was just enough snow to work with, and since it had just fallen overnight there weren’t too many footprints or hand prints to mess up the pretty. I saw easily a half dozen photographers taking advantage of the same conditions.