I have often walked past this lone oak tree and wondered how to get a good picture of it. The challenge is that the oak does not stand alone but is surrounded by several other trees

Magnus Cramne

This picture was captured in Molnsatra Nature Reserve. Molnsattra is part of an old open farming landscape I often return to on my photo trips. Molnsattra farm is located a few miles northwest of Stockholm in Sweden. It has roots dating back to the Middle Ages – cows and horses still graze there.

I have often walked past this lone oak tree and wondered how to get a good picture of it. The challenge is that the oak does not stand alone but is surrounded by several other trees, which I did not want to include in the frame.

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After having a discussion with an experienced photographer and friend, I was advised to wait for a snowstorm to separate the tree from the background. There was a heavy snowfall on one of the first days of January. So, I quickly packed my photo gear and a thermos full of coffee and drove off to the nature area.

After twenty minutes of pulsing in the snow, I arrived at the spot and started looking for the best angle. My goal was to separate the oak tree from the background and find a perfect shutter speed for the snowfall. It should still be visible that it was snowing heavily.

I chose to use my favourite Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens on my Nikon Z7 II and used a tripod.

I probably took about fifty pictures from different angles and with different settings. Once at home, it was easy to sort out which ones I wanted to proceed with. The editing in Lightroom was limited. Finally, the image got a turn in Photoshop as I found their clone tool works better for some twigs I wanted to remove.

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