"Hey... I think it might be snowing...!"

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ORIGINAL POST: 18 Feb 2008
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I wake up yesterday at about 10:30 to get ready to go into Athens for the day...

Take my shower. Brush my teeth. Pick up the Leica. I should have looked outside before any of this...

It wasn't exactly subtle... it was snowing and the public transit system was frozen...


Haha... I made a funny!
No joke. And this isn't a regular thing for this area. Of course, Greece regularly gets snow in its higher elevations, but most people don't live there. In small coastal towns like Porto Rafti, a little snow shower is not out of the ordinary, but 6 inches of snow in an afternoon is.

"Hey guys! I think it might be snowing!"


You don't have to tell the dogs that...

As usual, I can't get through a full blog post without featuring at least one of the dogs in at least one photo. They are such a prevalent part of life around here...


I seems to be warmer in the flower bed. I'd think so...

But, put a bunch of college kids in a building together - cooped up for a snow day - and it won't be long before a snowball fight ensues.





What started with just 3 or 4 quickly escalated into half of the students joining in on the armed conflict.



And what started with me being inside with my camera safely behind large panes of glass... you can only get so many pictures from there...

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough!" ~Robert Capa

Get out there in the fray!




Oh, and if you want to shoot in heavily falling snow with auto-focus, just know that its going to get freaked out by snow moving around and changing directions. Never use tracking, of course... but I found that the wide-zone auto-focus really does well. Spot gets confused by big snowflakes if it passes in between you and the subject. The wide-zone keeps the focus area wide enough to get the whole subject and not try to focus on other things.

For example...

Easy there, John...



There were a few moments of unity among the troops... but for the most part it was a free-for-all. Like all good snowball fights should be...



Good times, guys...

That's one of those things you won't soon forget...

But the snow did not end there! Hours later it was still falling...

I have no idea why there was this Thomas Kinkade looking thing in our back yard... but whatever...

And then the next morning... the snow had stopped... but it left quite a scene...

Mighty stupidly cold...

Even after all this snow has been trying to melt it is STILL only a little over freezing outside.

This big marble building is pretty cold in here, too. The fire doesn't help that much but its better with it than without. Fire requires firewood, though. And firewood only comes with trips to the pile. And the pile is outside.


So...

That was yesterday...

Our little trip to the Peloponnese has been postponed until Wednesday. I don't know if I'll post again before Saturday, though. I don't know...

...but anyways...

Thank you guys for keeping up with me and my random exploits on this side of the world.

Stay tuned...
~Noah D.