Name: Hal Gage
Picture title: Starburst Mud
Category: Intimate Landscape
Nationality: American
Occupation: Graphic designer / Photographer

Hal says:
‘After years of photographing the magnificent ice faces, canyons and caves of the Matanuska Glacier (100 miles north of my hometown Anchorage), I finally looked down at my feet. What I discovered was a world of patterns and shapes in the melt waters of the glacier. 

This image is of a mini mud volcano. Water comes bubbling up through a thin layer of silt and mud suspended over a sheet of melting ice (perhaps several hundred feet deep).

Although this image looks like a time exposure, the forms are changing by the millisecond and I had to use a short shutter speed to capture the shapes at that instant. That said, I made two exposures: one above the centre of the composition and one slightly below, and stitched them together later in software to get a hi-res square format. Because of the ever-changing subject matter, I don’t always get a convincing stitch but it worked out this time. 

When making the final image I used software to create a split toning effect to give my black and white images a visual feeling of increased depth and separation. This is why the B&W image has a brown tone to it – in this case to the lightest values of the image leaving the mid and lower values neutral.’

Technical information:
Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III 
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM 
ISO 100 
f/32
Accessories: Tripod, remote release 
Post processing: Lightroom and Photoshop

Website: www.halgage.com
Instagram: halgage
Twitter: halgage