Beech in the Snow | Weekly Photo #89
Brrrr…!! It’s been a cold one this past week in the UK. Here in the south of England, we tend to get snowfall once or twice a year and when it does fall, it’s usually just a light dusting and gone within a few hours of daylight but every few years we get a heavier snowfall and that’s what happened this week and I had great fun photographing in foggy, frosty and snowy conditions. Restricted in where I can go due to the ongoing lockdown situation, I managed to get out with the camera a few times to photograph my local woodlands and forests and now have quite a pile of raw photos which I’m really looking forward to rummaging through and editing. Fingers crossed I have one or two keepers in there!
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 50mm | 1/17th Second | f/9 | ISO400
Keeping with the frosty theme, this is a photo I took a few weeks ago during what turns out to be quite a rare hoar frost. It wasn’t until I heard other photographers refer to it in this way that I wondered what it was, so I did a bit of googling. A hoar frost requires freezing conditions and moisture in the air, such as foggy conditions and ice builds up on the freezing surfaces making it appear like white hair which is why the word hoar, the old English term for “old age” is used.
While wandering the forest, I came across this cluster of beech trees along the path and was drawn to how prominent they looked against the brighter, more fragile looking frosty scene around them. I didn’t have many options in terms of where to place the trees as they were leaning into the frame so placing them on the right and using the dark, muddy floor on the left to balance the contrast somewhat gave me the composition you see here. Using my 18-55mm lens, I composed and took the shot.
This photo is featured in a blog post I released last week all about photographing winter landscapes and if you are looking to get the most of your own wintry landscape photos, take a look as you might find the tips I share useful.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.