“I just knew that I had to stop and photograph these marshmallow trees”

Every year, Alisa Zuniga takes a trip somewhere different to see in the New Year. Last year, she decided to stay closer to her home in Colorado, USA. “I chose to head for the southwest because it’s my favorite part of Colorado,” she says. As she was traveling, heavy snowfall transformed the landscape – including the trees, which were barely visible but still beautiful.

“My route to Ridgeway takes me up and over Monarch Pass and that moment couldn’t have been more perfect,” says Alisa. “I just knew that I had to stop and photograph these marshmallow trees that were sitting in front of the bluebird sky.”

In landscape photography, finding a suitable composition can be a challenge. “I decided that, instead of taking a photo with my wide lens to frame the landscape in a panorama, I wanted to capture as much of its beauty as I could to convey what I was seeing and feeling,” she says. Alisa grabbed her telephoto lens and shot a series of portrait frames. The snowy scene is located 3,350m above sea level at the top of the Monarch Pass, so Alisa not only had to contend with the cold but also the wind. “To avoid camera shake, I used a tripod and a fast shutter to capture the contrast of white against the blue sky.”

In post-processing, Alisa took her eight-frame panoramic shot into Adobe Camera Raw, selecting the thumbnails so that any adjustments she made would also appear on the RAW sequences. After adjusting the contrast, highlights and shadows, Alisa stitched the images together in Photoshop using Photomerge, aligning them into one image. “I cropped and merged all the layers and ended up with a large image,” she says.

Tech details

Camera: Nikon Z9

Lens: Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8

Aperture: f/13

Shutter speed: 1/250 sec

ISO: 100

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