LOCALadk Magazine

52 Winter 2019 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk Forests and Intimate Details The deep forests that represent much of the six million acres of the Adirondack Park hold many hidden scenes just waiting to be discovered by the patient photographer. Whether en route to a high summit or on a relaxed Sunday morning snowshoe through the woods, pay close attention to your surroundings and you'll discover details that often go unnoticed. The small creek that gets stepped over in the summer without a thought is transformed into an abstract world full of bizarre forms when it freezes. Ev- ergreens that typical- ly blend into the back- ground become coated with rime ice and morph into some- thing straight from a Dr. Seuss book. Shadows cast on the snowy forest floor by the low-angled win- ter sun take on ghostly shapes. The winter forest, while serene, can also be a chaotic and difficult subject to successfully photograph. A fresh blan- ket of snow can help to simplif y things by covering up the jumbled forest undergrowth, but extra care still needs to be taken to ensure that not too much is crammed into the same image. Experimenting with a telephoto lens to isolate small- er sections of the forest is a great way to clarif y the winter forest, and these lenses are especially useful for turning the mundane into an abstract work of art, especially when the image is converted to black and white. Using a telephoto lens to create a frame-filling shot of snow-cov- ered tree branches, for example, can yield an image that's a study of lines, shapes, and tex- tures, and presents the winter forest in a unique and intriguing way. One of the most fascinating aspects about mountain climbing is how the geography changes with ele- vation, and this is espe- cially apparent when it c o

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