For this shot, the camera is FinePix S3000. Windows photo editor was used. (Photo shot at f/8.2, exposure 1/1200, ISO 100.) The true "star" and subject of this shot is Light. The conditions all came together in a rare fashion that to me expressed a rare, beautiful scene that I felt grateful for being able to witness, and feel. As most of us, I wanted this photo to capture the "feeling" that I was experiencing, a rare expression of Mother Nature's Beauty.
How the highlights and blossoming happened here. Conditions: 1. bright sun; 2 dry cold air hovering near the melting 32F thus the ice is thinly coated with a layer of water transitioning from ice.; 3 Light entering the various layers of ice , hits the solid branch, and is reflected back out through the ice layers. Light enters ice layers and there is some absorption by ice molecules, and some deflection, reflextion and refraction; 4. The watery molecules on top of the ice layers are like an infinite layer of moving "mirrors" which causes the light both to reflect and to diffuse, giving a somewhat star quality to the light. The electromagnetic waves of light are diffused, reflected, deflected and then as the light "exists" through the ice it "regroups," both into a center core, and is also diffused with the haloing effect. This is opposed to being prismatically separated into rainbow like colors. ( I did capture this rainbow effect in another shot of a tree, but here the light went into the ice and exited in its beautiful center core and star-like diffused state.) I was very fortunate to be able to capture the "moment" which as you know is continually changing with nature, sun, ambient conditions etc. So a "lower end" camera is used, but higher editor to help bring out the best. With such bright, beautiful light, it is not necessary to have a high pixel sophisticated camera every time. I am not sure that my iphone 12mp camera could have captured this with the same "feeling." This older, light weight, Fujifilm finepix S3000 was versatile enough to do the job, helped by a newer windows photo editor program, also not so sophisticated. The original shot was luckily captured so well that very little editing was really needed. ( I could send the original not edited if you wish.) Thank you for your question.
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