At an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet above sea level, the trees on the peak that we made camp on in the Bridger Teton National Forest are few and far between. The combination of frigid temperatures, poor soil, and high winds have made it nearly impossible to sustain plant life. But the trees that do manage to take root among these harsh conditions make for some truly spectacular pieces of art:
The "tree" pictured here bears the scars of the extreme winds it once encountered during its life; twisting and spiraling upwards as if having been wrung out like a rag. Now long since living, it has been broken down and reduced to little more than a home to the moss growing on its East (not North)-facing side; meaning that, for all you outdoors-men out there, this is not the tree to use when trying to find your way home.
Lucky for me, its purpose was not for guidance out of the woods, but rather a portrait for experimenting with what I want to call Extreme Dynamic Range photography (EDR?). You've probably heard of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos before; in fact, these days just about every iPhone you can find has the capability. The process is simple: For most HDR shots, your camera will take multiple photos (very quickly) of the same view at different apertures (changing how much light your sensor receives) or exposure lengths (changing how long your sensor receives light). Then the software on your phone overlays the images onto one another to create a photo with a higher dynamic range of lighting than normally available.
What I have done is similar, but I have utilized only the process of changing the exposure length, except in my case the changes represented to capture this photo were in orders of magnitude (from three seconds to over three thousand) instead of minute increments like found in most phone cameras (usually from 1/200 of a second to 1/100 of a second...ish). The effect that you receive is the ability to see the rotation of the stars in the sky in the background of the photo, while still achieving tremendous detail of the moss and dead-wood in the foreground. Of course, some manual manipulation was necessary...I used a flashlight to illuminate the foreground so that I could achieve a shorter exposure time during the dark of night.
The end result: An Extreme Dynamic Range image. Pretty cool stuff, and a touch above what your everyday iPhone can produce.