Winter Water

Winter Water, Mendon Creek - February 2009

The 30th annual Monkey Island holiday card was mailed from Long Beach, New York this year on the Monday before Christmas. It was an informal format this year (fold on top) with the sentiment 'Twisting through the winter wood, twisting the year away' on the inside. The picture was taken alongside Route 4 near Wheelerville Road between the towns of Mendon and Killington, Vermont. 

I really like the way this picture came out, and many people have said many very nice things about it, for which I'm grateful.  And not only because I had to climb over a pile of plowed snow on the roadside in order to clamber down the  ice-crusted snowy embankment so I could capture the scene  closer to the level of the creek, so there wouldn't be the extreme downward angle I'd get if I just shot from the road, which would result in a reverse keystone effect with the trees.

This was shot with the 5D using the 24-105L at 24mm.  I used ISO 100  to keep the noise to a minimum, and a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second at f11.  The f-stop is the key to the whole picture, a small aperture (and f11 is about as small as you want to go with a wide angle lens, any smaller and there will be distortion at the edges and darkening in the corners) gives greater depth of field, which is how all those trees are in such sharp focus.

.