Stille Nacht
(Silent Night)

I shot this photo many hours after sunset... it was completely dark. I was standing in a field covered in about 14 inches of snow and temperatures in the 20's. In the still of this night I was shooting exposures at lengths of 2 minutes... not a breeze of any kind as is evident by the motionless branches.

The most challenging aspect of this type of photography is focusing and getting the right exposure settings. Of the two, the exposure settings were the easiest. I must say, in the pre-digital world I never would have been able to calculate the correct exposure.

But getting the right focus was extremely challenging since I could hardly make out the trees in the view finder... the best I could do was a close approximation and make micro adjustments until the images were coming out crisp.

I've never done this sort of thing before and now I am totally hooked!