I had not tried to make a picture with that particular look and feel before. The idea was born on location in the process of shooting.
That evening I started my shooting process again by taking standard pictures. I made a lot of images of birches with big round snowflakes. But then I felt they did not relate to my emotions. I wanted to capture a blizzard's dynamics to emphasise motion. Then a decision came up to use the ICM technique and close the aperture for transforming sedately falling snowflakes into streaking comets.
It was a twilight hour that gave the image a magical blue tone. I set a slow shutter speed and moved my camera vertically to blur tree trunks and achieve a painterly look. An on-camera flash illuminates snowflakes.
We are used to seeing them in photographs as big white circles. But here, they have tails and look like tiny comets thanks to a closed aperture (f/16 in this case). They fly through the air like an arrow from a bow. And blurred trunks of birches add to this sense of fast movement.
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Dimitri Vasileiou • Editor