These mountain ash berries in our backyard were buried by another foot of fresh powder snow yesterday.
Lots of precipitation, along with unusually cold temperatures made for a lousy summer, but those same conditions have made for an awesome winter!
In camera meters are typically set to expose at a level to render the scene in middle gray. This works great for most situations, but here, to avoid having gray snow, I added 2 stop of exposure compensation to my settings so that the snow would be bright white.
I also added some flash set at minus 2/3′s of a stop of exposure compensation. The relatively little light provided by the flash helps the berries “pop”, without having the appearance of a flash photo.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent color contrast! Well done!
Cheers, Klaus
Excellent color, with the adjustments makes a neat photo-Well Done
Love the contrast between the Red and white
The last bits of summer holding on 
great shot, love the color and the background… we still have leaves on the trees down here in the south, but they are falling fast.
Wow dude. I have never seen any color other than gray or brown in the same scene as snow.
The Coldwater Creek catalog has this really great image too of an aspen forest with yellow foliage just dumped on by fresh snow.
Thanks everyone!
Coldwater Creek is one of the few catalogs I thumb through before throwing away because of the photography.
Very interesting pic.Very Christmas-like. I like it.
Thanks Beth – it does kind of have a Christmas feel.
Ron
Do bears eat those type of berries? You know, since you really had a cold summer, I bet the inland grizzlies will be very hungry this spring! And the blackies! At least nearer to the coast they have samon. Did you have a good Samon run this year?
That is a good question, I don’t know if bears eat them. I never have seen them eat them, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I understand there was a bear in our backyard when we were traveling – it would have been interesting to watch.
It was a good salmon run. Plus, there wasn’t much flooding this fall, so the old salmon won’t be washed away. This is good for bears and eagles.
Thanks,
Ron
Great picture. Really dig the rich red.
Thanks!