One of the iconic shots of New Zealand is this lone willow tree in Lake Wanaka on the west coast of the South Island. Because pictures of this tree have gone viral with social media, there can be 100 people or more vying for a good position every day. Fortunately, there are several angles from which you can get a great shot. I wanted the water to appear like glass, so I used various lengthy shutter speeds to see what looked best. Because it was fairly windy, excessively long exposure times weren’t a good idea. The leaves of the willow would blur and that’s not what I wanted. I shot this in the late afternoon with a gray cloud cover as well as at sunrise the next morning with lighting from a low angled sun that was illuminating the autumn leaves beautifully. My settings for this shot were 6 seconds, f/32, 100 ISO. The low ISO and the small lens aperture forced the shutter speed to be slow. That’s why there is little definition in the water. It blurred completely, obliterating the texture of the waves in the water.
0 Comments