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2012: Botanical Realms - Winner

Glenn Upton-Fletcher Enlarge image Painting with snow

Glenn Upton-Fletcher (UK)

Painting with snow

The sky above Brock Valley in Lancashire, England, suddenly darkened, and the snow began to fall heavily. Glenn was thrilled. He’d grown up in Africa, and snowfall this thick was a complete novelty. As the soft, heavy flakes whispered through the oak trees, he was so distracted that he had trouble concentrating on the technicalities of photography. ‘I was captivated by the feeling of solitude, with my visibility so limited and the silence so surreal,’ he says. The steep sides of the ravine seemed to channel the snow into a concentrated sheet, and Glenn put aside all thought of photographing the roe deer he was tracking and set about depicting both the sense of the density of the snow and the beauty of the effect. ‘I needed a good depth of field to keep much of the tree in focus but also to choose my focal point carefully, so some of the snow was blurred to give motion and some static to appear as flakes.’ With that in mind, Glenn set about ‘painting the magical scene’.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II N + 500mm f4 lens; 1/80 sec at f11; ISO 400; Gitzo tripod + Wimberley Sidekick + Really Right Stuff BH-55 Ball Head; remote shutter release.

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