ShinyPhoto

Last night, snow fell. It's happened before and will probably happen again.... but this was a good solid layer all around with more falling fast from thick low clouds reflecting the light pollution, all sound muted quiet around. So I went out with the camera gear. Stood for maybe half an hour making photos watching the snow fall. By night, the streetlight cast a peculiarly spooky light on the tree, illuminating select branches snow-covered branches. It took a fair bit of experimenting to make this photo. I really wanted diffraction spikes close around the street-light, which dictated an aperture of at least f/16; at base ISO 100, that made for an exposure of 10s. Over that interval, the falling snow would leave no impression in the frame at all; so I used two flash strobes, one on-camera and one about 10-12 feet in front at ground level to illuminate the snow in the foreground. With two pixel-shift sequences totally 8 frames, blended together in max mode, enough snow accumulated to give a pleasant foreground texture.