Heavy Boughs

Snow in North Carolina can be a rare thing these days, substantial snow fall even more so. This was originally captured in November of 2020 just inside the Great Smokey Mountains park in Cherokee, the roads were slushy, but not awful, the overcast brought the glare down, even at 10am that morning when I managed to capture this image. I had originally tried to get into Cataloochee, but there was no access, the long gravel road into the valley too treacherous. So I began working on finding something new, something substantial. This image seemed to call to me once I arrived, I of course had originally shown up for the elk, but this image pulled me in. Somehow it’s sat on my drive untouched all this time, waiting patiently for the day I remember.

Snow is notoriously difficult to shoot, and not for the reasons you think. A plain white image with a central subject is just fine, but that subject needs to stand out to your viewer. Snow is difficult because you often cannot find contrast. When I first took this image I could see the contrast clear as day, but in the raw image it wasn’t there, it didn’t draw me in. That’s not so much a problem, we can often recreate and recover the contrast, however it can be easily overlooked in your database when you have other images that are more easily worked on. For me, I overlooked this scene in favor of the elk photos I took on that same morning.

For this image my edit was fairly simple. I created two separate masks. A mask for the sky, and a mask for the dark shadows. I brought the skies highlights down, and boosted the contrast of the shadows. Then I dropped the saturation of the image, all while bringing my color temperature down. It’s simple, but effective. You don’t need to work hard on your edits, though I often do, this photo was simple. As for the basic composition, this is actually the tops of very tall trees behind a large visitor center, however, because of how the scene works, and the elevation I was at, it worked out. This is a prime example of why telephoto lenses are very important for landscape photography, and how they can save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

Until Next Time!

Aperture: f8
ISO: 200
SS: 1/250th
Focal: 84mm

Fujinon 50-140mm