The house I grew up in had no central heating, only the gas fire in the living room. There was no double-glazing either and it was quite normal to wake up and see your breath in the bedroom. It was also common to find ice on the inside of the windows – frost ferns of extraordinary beauty.
In response to this music, I wanted to capture those patterns of ice, but the weather here is stubbornly mild and ordinary. Undeterred, I set about recreating the sorts of photographs I might have taken, but had to rely on some digital transformations, taking an image of an actual frosted fern taken in my garden several winters ago, and pressing it against a window of my own invention. When the first of these images coalesced, I gave a small cry of delight – for yes, here they were again, those delicate veneers of ice, just as I remembered them, and for a moment at least, I was my small pyjamaed self.
Having produced these ‘fake frosts’, I wondered if I could develop things a little further – or rather, I wondered if CGI-whizz kid, Deanna Crisbacher, could help me in the attempt. After all, not so long ago, Dee had taken some landscape photographs of mine and turned them into an entire range of planets and nebulae! Fortunately, finding some time in her busy VFX schedule with The Flying Colour Company, Dee had a kick-about of her own, supplying me with a glistening array of computer-generated frost ferns derived from my digital collages.
Then it was back into Photoshop for a judicious crop or two and a sprinkling of tweaks, to produce this final set of frost ferns. Many thanks to Dee for helping me achieve digitally what I was unable to produce photographically. As I type this, the weather here remains drably wet and decidedly unpretty, my windows opaque, yes, but with condensation and a few chalky streaks of seagull shit. Fingers-crossed the depths of winter might still provide some real-world opportunities for nice ice!
Red's Kingdom 
Those photographs are eerily beautiful, like a petrified forest.
I don’t remember frost ferns indoors in our family home, but they were vicious in my first student flat. I remember being frightened I’d die of cold in that place!
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Morning, Jane – thank you, and yes I think the warm glow of childhood nostalgia might be insulating me from the lived reality of those frozen windows!
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I remember frost ferns on the corners of the windows on the coldest days of my childhood.. We had heat, but it was clearly not always quite enough!
These really capture deep winter. (K)
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