I often hop in the truck with my camera gear after supper. Early evening is the beginning of “golden hour”, when the sun is low in the sky. At this time of day the low sun creates interesting shadows and bathes the landscape in beautiful yellow orange light. No golden hour on this August evening. The clouds obscured the sun a few minutes after I left home and the rain started after that. One of the things I love about photography is the need to creatively adapt to changing conditions. So, I shifted my vision from “golden hour” to “thunder storm” and started to look at how the storm clouds and rain changed the prairie landscape. I drove around for about 30 minutes and took a few photographs. This one, my favourite from that evening, was taken just as I was arriving home. If you’ve followed my work, you know I can’t resist a lonely tree. The dramatic, angry sky behind this one made it irresistible.

Everyone who lives in Gretna, Manitoba knows this tree. It is located on Roy Smith’s land and is directly your line-of-sight when you turn onto Highway 30 from Gretna. I’ve taken a few pictures of this tree but none had the dramatic background that this one has. It was very dark by this time, meaning that I’d have to use a tripod and a long exposure or jack up the ISO in order to get a sharp picture. It was wet and windy outside so I chose the latter option. I have a bracket that I can attach to my truck window to support the camera in a pinch. It helps, but it isn’t a substitute for the tripod. My lens has built-in stabilization, which also helps. I turned the ISO to Auto and shot with the slowest shutter speed that I felt would give me a sharp picture. The ISO ended up at 7200, but I got the 1/250 @ f/8 that I needed to get the picture I wanted. High ISO settings increase the noise (like graininess) in the photograph. Since this photograph doesn’t depend on sharp details the high ISO noise wasn’t as big a factor for me.

Nikon D-750 w. Tamron 24-70 F/2.8; 1/250 @ f/8, ISO 7200