This photograph was taken in October 2019 in the Retezat Mountains, Romania. It was a cold (but not very cold for the season and altitude) autumn morning and I hiked more than an hour in the dark from the tent to get to the Bucura peak (2433m alt.) in time before sunrise.
My plan was to take a grand wide angle photograph, and I had good chances, because I knew the place well and the light in autumn is usually good. But this time the sky way empty, the light was dull, not better than any mediocre summer sunrise. There was no chance for a good photograph. Then I noticed this small ice puddle, little bigger in size than a fist, on the top of a big boulder, almost exactly on the peak, probably from the melted thin snow layer from a few days before. Examined it more closely, I noticed its fantastic patterns and cracks; it was really beautiful and relatively easy to photograph. I only had to place the camera exactly perpendicular and be careful to have enough depth-of-field.
Composition was easy as well, I had just to frame the
subject and exclude any disturbing details in the corners. The image was taken approximately at
sunrise, without direct sunlight, but my polarizer filter reflected the sun’s warm light
onto the ice, making it even more interesting, so I decided to keep the reflection.
While I like a rather strong post-processing, even for the abstract shots, in this case it was not
necessary; mostly contrast needed increasing and the whites of the ice crack needed highlighting.
