Patterns in ice

In the time of the corona, we stick to our “cohorts” — which in my case, of course (?) consists of two photographer enthusiasts like myself. Our weekends, and some times weekday nights, we drive around in our nearby area, looking for something and anything to photograph. The last stop on last weekend’s roadtrip was spent at a frozen lake, where I discovered these neat patterns in the ice.

The images are taken with the Twist 60 wide open (f/2.5), which adds a “swirly” effect towards the picture edges and also a nice vignette. Fullframe camera for all images, some slight cropping on a few. Click to view large:

In hindsight I would probably stop down a few notches to avoid quite as much of the swirl. For this kind of motif — everything in the same plane — I notice that the effect may seem more disturbing than desirable. Wide open, the Twist 60 lends a magnificent depth to portraits and similar motifs that are composed with a certain distance between the main subject and the background — as in the image below, taken during the same trip: