I live very close to a lake, and I do a lot of photography there. In winter it is usually covered by ice and snow. But sometimes, in early winter, when it is cold and no snow, there is just a translucent ice cover on all the lake (10 km long).
In December a couple of years ago, very special conditions appeared. After a short, mild period, a thin layer on the top of the ice cover melted, but soon froze again. This resulted in an intricate pattern on the ice surface that I have never seen before or later. During a couple of hours, when the low winter sun played along the ice, the rainbow colours appeared in all the ice fields.
I moved around and tried to find the best positions to create images with the most interesting content, both form and colour. Usually the fields were appr. 1 to 1,5 meters in diameter. As the sun moved fast, I also had to move around and work quickly. As I sometimes had to shoot directly into the reflected light, it was difficult to see the results and expose correctly. Therefore I made as many shots as I could and did the selection afterwards. The conditions were at the best in the beginning, and the selected image is in fact the first I made. The next day the conditions had already changed and the light was not refracted in the same way as earlier.
The post processing is very truthful to the original, I have just increased the
contrast slightly and removed some of the warm shade. However, I have kept the most
of it, showing the feeling of the last golden rays of light. This is full frame, no cropping."
