The night I took this photo it was in the ballpark of 7°F [that's around -14°C for you metric types]. That's about as cold as it gets in Maryland.

I took around a dozen shots of the stairs, from different angles, with each exposure running between one and four minutes. To keep the porch light from over-exposing the stairs, I waited until the last 30 seconds of each shot to trip the motion detector.

Fortunately, I was using 400 speed film [Kodak Portra 400UC] which cut the exposure times by one fourth. After each shot, which took a few minutes to set up and a few minutes to shoot, I ran upstairs and warmed up. I left the camera outside; the batteries couldn't take the cold, though. Rather than bring the camera inside with me [and deal with condensation] I simply swapped a new set of batteries every few shots. An hour later I swapped the original batteries back in, after they had warmed up.

I don't ever remember experiencing tempertures below zero [again, -17°C for the European readers], although I distinctly recall some single digit lows in both New York [where I grew up] and in Maryland, where I lived for six years.

That all changed in February of last year. My second night in Anchorage was -2°F [-19°C]. Now that October is upon us, winter is setting in. 50°F [10°C] will be a rarity. By Monday night, temperatures below freezing will be the norm; first at night, then during the day.

My Inupiaq neighbor, who hails from Shishmaref, was teasing me today. "Winter is coming. Are you ready?"

Um. No.