Yesterday morning felt like one of those quiet bets you make with nature. The night had frozen everything solid, so I suspected there might be low-hanging fog waiting somewhere between the fields and the treelines. As I walked in, part of me was afraid I had already “mist” it — but as the sun crept closer to the horizon, the air began to thicken, soft and silver, like the world taking a slow breath.
Just before sunrise, something unexpected happened. High above the forming fog, an ice cloud lit up in iridescent colours — mostly red, orange, and yellow, with subtle hints of green and blue. Ice crystals at high altitude can refract sunlight much like tiny prisms, creating these fleeting rainbow glows known as irisation. It felt like a quiet scientific miracle happening in real time.
That’s when I saw the leafless tree. Stark, skeletal, patient. And suddenly the composition clicked: a tree seemingly losing its last colours into the sky, like a gentle puff of smoke drifting upward. It’s not my most dramatic image, but there was something special in its simplicity — a moment where winter, light, physics, and imagination lined up just long enough to press the shutter.
Photography, after all, is just another way of studying light and life.
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