Snow-bent Birch on Mud Mountain
Was just cruising around in the back country and came upon this gem.
I had a little time before dinner on Thursday evening, so I went looking for a photograph. But I hadn’t found anything, and it was after sunset, so I was just heading home when I came upon the tree above, but it didn’t look anything like that. I took some shaky, hand-held photos that evening, and only one of them was steady enough, so I thought I would go back the next day and up above is what I saw when I returned.
What did I see that first night? This:
It snowed about a half inch overnight, and that was all it took to transform from one look to another.
Both images were shot with a rented lens: the Canon 200mm f/2, mounted with an adapter onto my Sony α1. The shot at the top was taken in morning light, filtered by half-thick clouds; the evening shot above was taken after sunset, at ISO 800, 1/20th of a second, and f/2.5. (The lens has vibration compensation, or I would not have been able to get off a shot at all.) Even with the technology to compensate for motion, only one out of ten shots was useable.
The top shot is a panorama of three photographs, each shot at ISO 100, 1/1000th of a second, and f/2. HUGE difference in settings, but thanks to technology and some persistence, similar results.