When it comes to winter landscapes I love working with ice. Ice can be a lot of fun and one spot can suck up hours of time. As we all know from the ice cubes in our freezer that ice is usually cold and see through. While it changes often based upon what is behind it or what the ice is frozen too, the general thought when it comes to ice is that it’s cold to the touch and when capturing the essence of ice that is something to remember.
This happens to be a great time of the year because we don’t have the snow levels yet to cover up all of the ice that occurs when the rovers freeze. There is enough motion in the water to break free from the ice and thus create pockets of moving water combined with icebergs. One of my favorite places to spend a morning is up in Hyalite Canyon where there are lots of these pockets and the light keeps changing thanks to the natural landscape of the canyon.
Now everything I shot here is with the D4 and 70-200 VRII. Why that combo? Well, as it is with most canyons the darkest spot is on the bottom and the brightest is up top. To try and encompass everything would result in a lot of HDR images that wouldn’t accomplish what I wanted. The story wasn’t about everything it was merely about the ice and how it is constantly different. The 70-200 is a great lens for isolating those details in the ice.
This is a great example as everything around this one spot was surrounded in shrubs and brush that just wasn’t appealing. The focus was this one little waterfall, the last unfrozen patch in this section of river. What makes a great winter landscape image is he same as any other image, the light. Where the light hits, how much light and what is lost in the absence of light.