Winter Oak | Weekly Photo #92
Spring is just around the corner and I for one am looking forward to getting out into the great outdoors more often as the UK starts to tentatively lift the current restrictions we are under. Things are looking up! So, I thought I would wrap up the winter season with one last frosty landscape scene I managed to capture in a local woodland during a rare but incredibly beautiful hoar frost back in January.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 46mm | 1/160th Second | f/11 | ISO200
It had been a fantastically productive morning photographing the woodland not too far from where I live. The conditions were simply amazing as I had both mist in the air and a stunning, white hoar frost on the trees. I had started my morning a couple of hours earlier at this very spot and took a similar composition with the dominant tree silhouetted by a thick fog before heading into the woods to see what other photos I could take with a little help from these fantastic shooting conditions. You can see two other photos I took at the end of this post in my winter wrap-up.
As I returned to this spot a little later, the mist had almost cleared, making way for a bright, sunny, albeit freezing cold day and the clear blue sky with the white hoar frost on the trees and plants created this cold, fresh looking scene you see here. With this interesting English Oak standing tall, giving the composition a clear, central focal point, out came the camera ready to take this last photo of the morning.
Climbing to higher ground to avoid too much of the messy foreground, I set the tripod up with my Fujifilm XT2 camera and 18-55mm lens mounted on top. Looking through the viewfinder while composing the shot, something was off. The scene was too warm in camera and nothing like what I could see with my own eyes. As I shoot RAW and not Jpeg, I know I can correct the white balance in post, but with a simple switch to a daylight white-balance on the back of the camera, I could see these cool, fresh tones once again as I took the shot. A tip to remember going forward for sure!
I snapped away, taking a few wider compositions, then I changed the lens and zoomed all the way in to get a close-up, focusing on just the top half of this bare English Oak and those interesting branches that were fanning out from the top of the tree’s trunk. After I had all the pictures I wanted to take safety on the memory card, I packed up and headed home, grateful to be out of the cold with a nice hot brew.
To finish, I thought I would share a bit of a recap on some of the wintry themed posts I’ve written over the last few weeks, just in case you missed any.
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.