WHITE SPIRITS

ARTIST GRAHAME SYDNEY, WITH HIS PAINTERLY EYE TO THE CAMERA LENS, CELEBRATES ONE OF WINTER’S GREAT GLORIES – THE GHOSTLY HOAR FROST

Artist Grahame Sydney picks up his camera to capture a rare event – a hoar frost

FOR SIX DAYS earlier this year (from May 29 to June 4), the atmospheric conditions in the Cambrian Valley near St Bathans and Dunstan Creek were just right for a rare occurrence – a ‘hoar’ frost.

It takes a specific set of conditions to bring on the magic: still, cold nights, and a surface temperature below freezing point, that turns the dew that settles on vegetation and fence posts into soft, feathery ice crystals.

As temperatures ranged from a bone- chilling -9 degrees C after sunset then ‘soared’ to -2 degrees C during daylight hours, Grahame Sydney ventured out, his Canon 5D Mk11 in hand, to capture the scene. Here he writes about this uncommonly beautiful, short- lived natural event.

“I’ve known the word all my life but never thought about it. Now I find it comes from the old German ‘hehr’ meaning noble, majestic, even sublime; then to old English ‘har’ where it altered slightly to mean ‘grey- haired or white with age’. Hence to ‘hoar’ frost, whitened with the look of age.

The sense of sublime remains when nature delivers as it did this year: six days of freezing fog, no fun. But reward is all about in the soundless tranquility of a neighbourhood suddenly rendered surreal.

Then the sun gets through, the temperature rises a couple of degrees into plus, and within an hour it is gone, preserved only in photographs.”