When I went out to photograph the freshly fallen snow the other day, I expected to find some icing as well. The strom had begun as freezing rain. There was, in fact, very litte. None at all under the snow on the car. No glistening branches among the snowy beach roses. And I had to look for it in the forest. In fact the only ice I found was on single pine needles, where drops of water had been caught by the freeze. The drops, in the right light, looked like micro-christmas tree orniments…as though each fond of evergreen was a whole Christmas Tree in and of itself.

I backed off and used the long end of the zoom to isolate the frozen drops against a deep background. Smart Auto was smart enough to switch to Macro Mode on its own 🙂 The result is several times life size on any thing bigger than a phone display.

Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Smart Auto. ISO 480 @ 1/90th @ f5.9. 480mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Cropped slightly for composition and to eliminated out of focus elements on the right.