One of the most rewarding experiences in landscape photography to me is when a picture works out exactly the way I had in mind when I scouted it. I had the trees in this image on my list for quite a while. My ideal image required snow in the foreground to cover the rather uninspiring patch of grass that only the cows appreciate in summer. It also required fog to hide a background that would have distracted the view from the trees which I wanted to be the only subject.

I was driving back from shooting another scene and for some reason, I decided to take a small detour and check out those trees as I knew that the snow would fulfil at least one of my requirements. But it was already past sunset. So the last thing I expected was the scene that presented itself when I saw the trees. A beautiful fog had settled not only in the background but was also wafting through the foreground, very delicately hiding some parts of the landscape and revealing others. And as a bonus, there was even a gorgeous pinkish glow in the sky from the setting sun.

I couldn’t have asked for more! As it was already very late, I literally stopped my car on the road – a small country road – rushed to the trunk of my car to grab my equipment, prepared the tripod while running to the spot from where I needed to shoot, put on my camera, focused, and took a few images. Within less than five minutes, then the beautiful light was completely gone. What an incredibly nice surprise this was.