Tag Archives: snow covered trees

forest and trees, landscapes, mountains, Oregon, snow-shoeing, Uncategorized, vegetation

Snow covered forest in winter

Leave a comment

[/caption]

There is nothing more awesome than snow-shoeing deep in the forest just after a huge snow storm blankets the forest. I took this shot as well as many others while I was snow-shoeing within the Mt. Hood Wilderness. I had just finished photographing Mt. Hood when I decided to blaze through the trees and see what kind of pictures I could get. I was fortunate to have been visiting the day after it had snowed. I was trying to capture the perfect photo as I positioned my camera in every angle I could. This shot was taken at about 11:45am and I was pointing towards the sun. This created some reflections off the trees and made them look somewhat blueish as this can happen when you’re taking pictures in the snow. I was also shooting at about an 80 degree angle so this makes the light have to bend at a pretty steep angle which can also completely change the lighting and the perspective of the shot. I made almost no changes to the saturation or brightness in photoshop. This is pretty much a raw photo with me mostly just cropping parts of the edges out since I was using my wide angle lens and the edges were dark due to the use of my filters and lens hood. I was using my Canon T1i along with my Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens. I had the focal length at 13mm in order to get as much of the trees in the frame. I attached my warming and CIR-PL filters in order to calm down the overexposure of the bright sunlit skies as well as eliminate any shadows that may appear from the trees. The camera mode was in Program/Normal so the aperture was at F-4 and the shutter speed at 1/40 second. I wasn’t using my tripod so I did increase the white balance to +0.7 so I could still keep the ISO at 100. I was lucky enough to avoid any sun glare, especially since I was looking almost directly in the sun and the aperture was at F-4. Using the trees to block parts of the sun and having filters helped avoid this

forest and trees, landscapes, mountains, Oregon, snow-shoeing

Oregon Cascades

Leave a comment

[/caption] The best thing about snow-shoeing in fresh powder is that you can always find some great photo opportunities. I always try to include the snow covered trees, the untracked fresh powder and a mountain or hill in the distance. It’s also beneficial if you have a sky with a great personality in the background of the mountain. The is a great shot since it includes everything that I just mentioned. The sky is really cool since the blue sky had just given way to some high clouds that were moving in from the north. I was snow-shoeing up near Mt. Hood when I turned around to see this great view of the snow and clouds. I was lucky enough to not have tracked through this scene and was very impressed with the color of the clouds moving in. I’ve been to this spot several times but I’ve always been disappointed with the clouds in the background. However, this time I was very impressed. To get this shot I was using my 18-55mm Canon lens along with my Canon T1i Rebel. I wasn’t using my tripod since the lighting was pretty good. I had the camera in Program mode with the ISO set at 100 and the white balance at -1.3. The F stop was at F-9 and the shutter speed was at 1/160 second. I was using my UV, warming and CIR-PL filter and the focal length was at 55mm. The snow was so awesome that I could have spent all day photographing within just a 1/4 mile radius of where I parked. There is something magical about being the first person to snow-shoe during the first snow storm of the year. There is nothing better that knowing that you can just point your camera in any direction and know that you don’t have to worry about finding unwanted snow-shoe prints in your scene. Unless of course it’s of your own snow-shoe tracks.