Hello Reader !

Cracker Barrel.

Our family's go-to pit stop on any road trip worth taking.

Or right before we catch a flight.

Pancakes for breakfast.

Pancakes for lunch.

Pancakes for dinner.

Well... not for me. I'm not a pancake guy.

Hand me a country fried steak for all three meals and don't hold back on the gravy.

But this next pancake?

This one?

I'll take seconds.

Let me paint the picture.

Dead of winter.

February 11th, 2025.

The kind of cold that doesn't just chill you... it physically hurts.

Bone-deep, face-stinging, why-am-I-alive cold.

But I loaded up the truck and drove to Point Pelee anyway.

Still can't tell you why.

Bored out of my skull, probably.

Cabin fever driving me nuts.

That restless itch that makes you do questionable things.

So there I was... trudging the boardwalk.

Not another human in sight.

Not a bird.

Not a squirrel.

Not even tracks in the snow.

Just me, the creaking planks beneath my boots, and a savage wind carving away at my face one frozen cell at a time.

Oh... and my Nikon Z8 with the 50mm mounted.

After one quick loop around the trail, I'd had enough.

My fingertips had gone numb twenty minutes ago.

My toes?

Completely MIA.

You know that moment when your socks stop being fabric and become frozen torture devices?

Yeah. That.

I remote-started the truck from fifty yards away to get the heat cranking and started my escape.

But as I was rolling out of the park, something in my peripheral vision grabbed me.

A full moon climbing above the horizon.

The sun already long gone.

That razor-thin window of time between Blue Hour and total darkness.

And just ahead... a tiny wooden pier jutting out into the frozen marsh.

I slowed down.

Stopped.

Sat there arguing with myself.

Too cold.

Fingers don't work.

Just go home.

Opened the door anyway.

Camera in one shaking hand, I walked to the edge of those weathered planks.

And then... I saw them.

Pancakes.

Ice pancakes scattered across the marsh like someone had tossed them from the sky.

Hundreds of them.

Layer upon layer stretching as far as I could see.

Pops of purple and blue washing across the twilight sky...

...and mirroring themselves perfectly in the frozen water below.

It was absolutely stunning.

And I was shaking like I'd grabbed a live wire.

I had no choice... I had to shoot handheld at 1/2000th of a second.

No tripod setup.

No time.

Any slower and my trembling hands would turn this into abstract art.

Then I dialed in f/4.

Ugh. Not what you want for a landscape.

But f/11 would've pushed me to ISO 12,800, and that felt like asking for trouble.

So I compromised at ISO 1600 and fired.

Looking back now with warm fingers and a clear head, I should have used...

f/11 | 1/250th | ISO 3200

More depth of field to keep everything sharp.

Plenty fast enough to kill the shake.

Cleaner detail from the foreground ice all the way to that glowing moon.

Honestly? It would've been the smarter play.

But my brain was half-frozen, and I abandoned my own golden rule...

Stop. Breathe. And ask yourself...

"What's the creative vision for this image?"

If I'd taken those ten seconds to think it through, I wouldn't have made the mistake.

I'm blaming the cold on this one.

But here's what that frozen evening hammered home...

When you pause... even for just a handful of seconds... and actually think about the feeling you're trying to bottle up, everything shifts.

Your choices change. Your settings align with intention.

The final image transforms.

Creative intention isn't some mysterious artistic superpower.

It's not complicated theory reserved for pros.

It's just a quiet moment of clarity before your finger hits the shutter.

And standing on that pier, staring at a marsh blanketed in frozen pancakes while my extremities staged a revolt, I got reminded... again... that the camera only captures what we consciously tell it to.

Even when our fingers are too numb to feel which button we're pressing.

​
Have an awesome day!

Chris Parker

Parker Photographic

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