Date Taken: 02/22/2015
Location: Beacon Heights, Milepost 305
A winter image taken from Beacon Heights during the last storm. We arrived to virgin powder on the rock. We watched as the clouds and snow swirled around. The thick fog rolling over Grandfather Mountain dissipated as it continued on down the valley, leaving an opening for the sun’s golden light show.
Camera: D810
Lens: Nikkor 17-35mm, f2.8
Focal Length: 17mm
ISO: 125
Shutter: 1/200 second
Aperture: f16
Filters: None
Exposure: Manual
How I Got This Shot: The flare happened so fast that I was only able to secure 2 shots of the golden light before it was gone. When It happened, I was standing pretty far back as to not track up the snow, keeping the horizon line as close to the lower third line in the composition. This was later cropped to include the rock and the sun itself on third lines also.
1/200 shutter speed was used to stop as much of the cloud movement as possible. I did not want to go up on the ISO, if possible. I would normally capture a shot like this with the aperture around f8 or f11 and focus stack, but since it happened so fast, the first shot I took was f16 to make sure I had something usable. I’m glad I did. My focus point was the tree under the sun giving me the correct hyper-focal distance to ensure the entire shot was in good focus.
For More Information
- Additional photographs by Tommy White Photography
- Categories where this photo is found: Snow, Sunrises & Sunsets