One of my favorite images from this year

"Manifestation"

I shot this a few weeks ago. I'd been waiting a few years for some very specific conditions: sustained freezing temperatures, minimal snow and lots of sun. All three of these things don't happen often together in Vancouver. It's difficult to get a shot of all the beautiful greens surrounded by icicles, because by the time the ice has form in significant amounts, snow has fallen.

But finally it happened. I went out to where I knew some icicles would form and did my best to get a shot. It was difficult because my camera needed to be in a very small space that a person can't fit inside of, so I was operating it blind and from the front. I was standing on icy rocks and had to duck down every time I fired the shutter so that I wouldn't ruin the photo. Care also had to be taken to not break the icicles as I was operating the camera.

In the end I didn't like the image. The light wasn't quite good enough, and neither was my framing. I waited again for the weather and went back a few days later, plus I installed the Nikon app on my phone so that I could use it as a remote viewfinder. The light was perfect and I was able to dial in my composition as if I were behind the camera. The icicles had grown larger as well.

That, however, was only the first battle. This is a technical image that required hours of painstaking Photoshop work. The icicles were only two inches from my lens, so I needed a significant focus stack to get everything in focus. Due to how close the icicles were compared to everything else, changing the focal point for the purpose of stacking also created a significant shift in perspective. This meant I had to stack everything manually, as it was impossible for algorithms to perfectly align everything. And then I had to do it all over again since this is actually a panorama! All together 24 shots were used to assemble this image.

Other issues to deal with were icicle motion blur, as they were literally growing as I was shooting this image, and a huge range in luminosity.

If you look closely, I am actually in this image. I was wearing a red jacket and you can see my reflection at the bottom of the second icicle from the left!

Ultimately it was worth the effort!

Base image settings:

10mm (full frame), f/16, 5s, ISO 100. Some exposures were up to 20 seconds long to get the dark details.

Let me know if you have any questions!

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