Ok first things first: I know that this shot has nothing to do with tundra, either the natural biome or the pickup truck. But it does sort of, kind of, describe the image and I like the alliteration, so I’m sticking with it. Also, the scene here really is pretty small, so at least that part of the titular description remains unambiguously apt. This is a leaf on one of my neighbor’s boxwoods after a recent ice storm (is it correct to classify hours of sleet overnight as a storm?) covered in about a quarter-inch of frozen water, that I shot with my D750 and 105mm macro lens. I went around that morning, camera in hand, looking for any photo opportunities that presented themselves while also taking time to play with my kids who were slipping and sliding all over any paved surface. While it was fun to see the familiar scene around me, that of my front yard and indeed our whole neighborhood, with fresh new eyes thanks to the coating of ice, I was also surprised at how much, or rather, how little of it made for interesting photographs.
One nice thing about shooting with a macro lens is that when you’re not sure what to do, just get closer and you’ll often find that the solution, as Henry Jones would say, presents itself. That was certainly the case on this frozen morning, since even relatively boring things like boxwood leaves took on a whole new appearance thanks to the ice. But at the same time, the more I looked around the more I realized that there was this odd monotone color palette that overshadowed everything and made shots, even macro shots, a lot more challenging.
What I found interesting about the composition you see here is that it’s got a couple of things going on besides the ice, and in fact the ice really does help add a new dimension to the image as well as the subject. There’s a single yellow leaf in the foreground, some green leaves in the background, and the subject itself is shot in a profile that shows how thin it is while also giving the viewer a sense of just how much ice is covering everything. I shot this at f/13 so I could get the leaf sharp and in focus while also still having a nice soft foreground and background, and you can see some really cool texture on the edge of the ice if you zoom in on the original image on Flickr. Is this the best shot ever? No, but it was fun and it forced me to think about how to create interesting compositions in challenging circumstances, and I hope I get the opportunity to do more of this the next time we get another ice store. But hopefully that won’t be for a good long while.
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