The sun, ice and a Canon camera. That’s about all I needed to make this picture last Friday, the day after an ice storm blanketed southern New Hampshire. Everywhere I looked there was a scenic or news picture waiting to be taken.

Using the sun to highlight the ice from behind, I used a Canon EOS 1, Mark III to photograph this apple tree at Woodmont Orchards in Londonderry.

The picture had poor reproduction in The Telegraph’s black-out edition, so I decided to show you how it really looked through the viewfinder.

Pictures like these are not hard to make. You don’t need a $5,000 camera body and lens. All you need is the ability to control your exposure. Some cameras do pretty well on auto-exposure, but be careful pointing it into the sun. This picture would have gone too dark set to auto.

I do tend to cheat a little and look at the screen on the back of the digital camera. Set to manual, I kept stopping my f/stops down until the sun appeared as a star. It doesn’t matter what the shutter speed is, as long as it’s not too slow. That apple tree wasn’t going anywhere!

Using the tree trunk to shield most of the bright sun, I set the camera on the ground and positioned it so that only a tiny bit of sunlight was visible. The 16mm lens was needed here so that I could get close to the tree.

-Bob Hammerstrom

bhammerstrom@nashuatelegraph.com

Tags: apple, Bob Hammerstrom, damage, ice, lesson, Londonderry, New Hampshire, Orchards, photo, photograph, picture, storm, tree, winter, Woodmont