As we prepare to turn our clocks ahead, I am going to turn mine back for a moment and take one quick, and possibly final, look back at this past winter.

With memories of having open windows on Christmas day still in the back of our minds, I started by shift on Saturday, Jan. 23 with the opening flakes of the first measurable snow storm of the season starting to fall. I always try to get a key image from major weather events. A single photo that seems to define the storm as a news event. As the day pushed on, it became obvious, that this storm, though a blizzard well south of New England, was not going to live up to the reputation that the storm had garnered in the national news media. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, it was hardly looking like a storm at all.   

Yes, it was snowy and icy, but sometimes what the eye sees the camera does not record as easily. Add to this that it was a Saturday. This meant that fewer people were on the roads, and most seemed fully content to ride out the storm warm and cozy inside. This led me to a state of magnified frustration. I was pretty grumpy that I had not taken a photo that I felt really put the storm in proper perspective.

Then it happened. I was taking one last sweep of Broad Street in New London before calling it quits for the day. As I turned onto Hampstead Street I saw a few blocks away, what appeared to be a person shoveling, something that much to my surprise and horror I has seen very little of all day. But what was this person wearing? From a distance it looked like a bulky snowsuit.

How it was that I did not crash my car when my eyes focused on a giant Gumby shoveling the sidewalk, I will never know. Half super excited and half petrified that Gumby would finish and run into his house as I approached, I ditched my car in a snowbank and bolted all but shaking with anticipation. As it turns out Gumby (aka Kevin Doyle) seemed to generally be in good spirits. I wondered if he had lost a bet, but he simply had been talking with his girlfriend and determined “What the heck” or as he put it "Why bothering having a Gumby costume if you do not wear it occasionally". This conversation was all the more fun considering that unlike talking to a person who could show displeasure at shoveling snow, Gumby just kept on smiling.

That is the way that this job can be some days. Just when you think you have no hope of ever finding a good photograph again for the rest of your life, you come across something that sets you back in your shoes, and you remember why you picked up the camera in the first place.

Tech notes: Lens: 24mm, ISO: 1000, Aperture: f/8, Shutter: 1/100th of a second, Camera setting: Aperture Priority