February Photo of the Month

Congratulations to Danny Graber for winning this month’s contest  

Morning Snow, Fog, and Cold 

This was taken on February 12, 2018, in Elkhart County. I have found it very difficult in many different tries to capture a true sense of fog, snow, and sun. This one seemed to work for me. In spite of it being shivering cold that morning, the sun was extremely bright (coming in from the right) so the contrast was high. I photographed in manual at ISO 100, f/8, at shutter speed 1/4000 using a 70-200mm lens. Because of the high shutter speed and because I was standing on a county road with noticeable traffic, I did not use a tripod. In Photoshop I toyed with varying color balance in order to give the photo a soft and slightly warmer-than-cold-snow appeal. Simply said, the color balance was the artist’s (my) choice rather than depicting the cold snow but at the same time retaining the feel of snow and fog.