In my brief foray to the cemetery, where I knew I could find a multitude of frost-covered trees, I looked for shots where the light was coming straight at the camera through the branches of the trees. The sunlight was relatively strong but still obscured by thin fog, which meant that with all the white surrounding me there was very good ambient light, as well. It is that ambient light in this photo that provides the detail on what would otherwise be the shaded side of this pine bough.

On an even more geeky note, it is a photo like this that helps me appreciate the high 23 mega-pixel resolution of the camera I use. You are looking a a compressed, resized version of the original. But even in this, I think you can see excellent detail in the needles of this tree.