P#34: A Winter Scene at the Snake River Valley

When You Want It All...

Terry Donnelly: This photograph is of a winter scene at the Snake River Valley. Again, this one is from Grand Teton National Park. The shot was taken just before sunrise. What you're looking at is the Tetons and the Snake River Valley, and the pink light is the earth shadow just before the sun comes up on the horizon.

The light is a beautiful color and it has just enough direction to illuminate the foreground snow drift. The thing that I like most about this picture is the way the snow drift echoes the direction of that fence as it goes through the picture. I tried very hard to break the rule of thirds by putting the fence smack down the middle of the picture and I didn't quite get it. (click the image for a larger version)

As we were talking earlier about making a big scene more dramatic, this one uses a really strong foreground. The picture was taken with a 4x5 camera and a relatively wide angle lens, which had I believe was a 115mm lens, so I could emphasize the snow-covered sage in the foreground and those snowdrifts.

It also keeps the mountains in the background in focus by pulling back on the camera by using the swings and tilts. You can do the same with a digital camera if you have a tilt shift lens. That's my favorite way of doing big landscapes -- to hinge the whole thing on a strong foreground.

Audri Lanford: Could you just say a word about what a tilt shift lens is for our listeners?

Terry Donnelly: Tilt shift lenses come in focal lengths of 24mm, 90mm, and I think 40mm -- I'm not quite sure. I use a 24mm because I just love these wide angle lenses. The 24mm tilt shift lens is closest to this lens on a 4x5, about a 115mm.

What they do is they move the front element of the lens so that it tilts downwards or up. It also shifts from top to bottom and side to side so that in a case like this, if you were to tilt the lens downward, it allows you to keep the foreground and background in sharp focus.

If you're doing architectural photography and you're doing pictures of tall trees and you want to keep the tops from converging, then instead of tilting the entire camera to look up at the tree, you shift the front element of the lens upward. That way, the trunks of the trees will remain parallel and you'll avoid that convergence at the top of the frame.

Tilt-shift lenses are very versatile lenses. They're not zooms. They're a prime focus lens, but I love using them and for that reason I still use my 4x5 quite a bit. I love the movements of those lenses.

In Conclusion

How did Terry Donnelly manage to capture all of the elements in this photograph without sacrificing one for another? It appears that his secret weapon was a tilt-shift lens. By using a tilt-shift lens Terry was able to keep the mountains in the background in focus while still having a strong foreground in this winter photograph of the Snake River Valley.