When the weather finally turns dry and cold in the western Washington lowlands after many days of clouds and rain, frost can build up on surfaces in the shady forest clearings. Snow is not common in the western Washington lowlands, but these clearings can become white as if it had snowed.

My eyes are typically attracted to the purity of the white surfaces. I tend to be attracted to the broader landscape surrounding such scenes. However, that tendency can cause me to neglect the beauty of the details within the broader landscape. But this time was different.

The sun was filtering through the forest canopy to shine locally on the frost that had built up for the past three days on the forest floor vegetation, in this case, sword ferns. The sunlight caused the frost to sparkle, catching my eye and compelling me to take a closer look.

So I put my camera on my tripod to get a close-up shot of the sparkling whiteness, shooting at a relatively high F-stop to maximize depth of field. Upon inspection of the images I captured that morning, I could see the beautiful crystalline structure of the frost and the sunlight reflecting off the crystalline surfaces. I could also see that the frost was not white after all, but clear (I, of course, already knew that, but I had not physically observed it close up in frost crystals).