The Rauriser urwald in the Hohe Tauern national park in Austria is a small primeval forest in the mountains, full of fallen trees, old spruces and pine trees covered with lychen and moss and numerous small puddles and swampy ponds. It is a wonderful and moody forest, but I had been struggling for days to capture the essence of it in my pictures. When the weather forecast predicted lots of rain after a period of sunny weather, I knew this could provide new opportunities and went there again.
Just before I reached the forest it started to rain heavily when a thunder storm rolled in and the clouds covered the mountain slopes, creating a rather spooky but beautiful atmosphere. I was reluctant at first to pack out my gear because it was really raining cats and dogs and didn’t have a lens coat or other rain protection, but I couldn´t resist the view and started to photograph. I used my 70-200 telezoom with 1.4x converter to zoom in on the trees. An additional benefit was the large lens hood, that offered some protection against the rain. After taking 5 or 6 pictures quickly, I had to put my gear away again because everything became too wet and the lightning came too close for comfort so I had to seek shelter. Back home I converted the picture into black and white to make it even more graphical.
Canon 5ds-r with Canon 2.8/70-200 L IS II lens and Canon 1.4x III converter at 280 mm, iso 800, f 6.3, 1/80 sec.
