Minimal Winter Photos

One of the things I love about photographing in the wintertime is that if you angle your camera downward against a rising slope, you can isolate the subject and produce an absolutely simple shot. Call it what you like—minimal, clean, uncluttered, Zen—the effect is the same: an image that calms the spirit and settles the senses.

I wonder if Marie Kondo gives photography workshops. Declutter your images. Leave in only those parts that give you joy. It’s not surprising that a contemporary “influencer” of the uncluttered space should happen to be Japanese. Traditional Japanese aesthetics lists seven principles necessary to achieve Wabi-Sabi which is a state of mind that emerges in the presence of beauty. One of those principles is Kanso which means simplicity or clarity. Kanso might also be understood as a process to the extent that it engages us in the practice of removing things from the frame until only the necessary remains.

Snow helps in this process by removing clutter in the background. In the case of the photograph above, that clutter includes dirt, grass, and shriveled wildflowers. In the case of the photograph below, that clutter includes a pond and the line of the far shore, all of which has turned to ice and been covered by a deep layer of snow.