Canon 5D Mark II, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/7.1, 1/1250, iso 100
One of the biggest and prettiest oak trees in our neighborhood belongs to my neighbor, it's just about 15 feet off our property line. It shields about 70 feet of his lot from our view.
In the last round of storms, ouch, it fell down. Not just fell, shattered into several huge pieces. I thought to myself "this tree has seen a thousand storms. It's probably 75-100 years old. Why now?" It's a live oak, so it keeps its leaves. The only thing I can figure is that all the branches and leaves had soaked in so much water that it was much heavier than the design rating. And then the 40+ mph wind came along. I'm really sad about this tree.
I got out and did a little shooting on Saturday, amongst everything else going on. At one point I was looking up at this steep hill, and saw this huge oak on top. With great cumulus clouds behind it. it was a unique perspective for a tree that I'm not accustomed to.
And I realized that even if you are a huge oak tree, a big winter storm would be scary indeed.
For post processing I did some spot painting to darken the sky and make it look more ominous. Then a preset called "Matt's Sin City - Light Red" really enhanced the clouds, rendering the "storm of doom" effect I was looking for.
