I’m still on a bit of a landscape trip at the moment with my photograpy. This evening though, the rain was pouring down, and the sky was pretty drab all over, which isn’t ideal for a lanscape scene. All was not lost though, it just meant I’d need to find something with enough interest at ground level.
Driving back from work, the rain was giving a really misty and ethereal effect in the valley between the two hills near to my home. It looked really interesting, and so I took a detour up some lanes and headed in the general direction of the valley.
Eventually, I found a spot that looked back down the valley, so the sun light was hitting it right, and there was a really interesting dead tree in the midground, along with some maize (I think) in the foreground and of course the mist drenched valley in the background. I had to be able to make something of this, I thought! So I parked up on a thin strip of grass down the lane, and had a look over the hedge.
I’m pretty chuffed with the composition, and the only thing I wasn’t overly happy with was the bland sky. So when digitally developing the images, I had a go at pulling more detail out of the sky.
It worked to a degree, but as you’ll notice in todays main image, in the end I actually opted to “blank” the sky entirely, and so emphasising the tree and the birds on it even more.
I worked the most on the sky in the images above and below, pulling some detail through in the top left corner. Maybe you think this works better, I dont know? For me, it was interesting to flatten the whole sky and just leave the eye to look around the dead tree, and the landscape around it. Like anything, its personal preference I guess, and that’s part of the reason I share more than one image in these posts.
The image below I made very flat, and blank, so there is very little to catch your eye except for the dead tree.
All the shots today were hand held, due to not wanting to have my camera out in the damp and rain for too long. To hold a fast shutter I upped the ISO a little, but only as far as 200, so as not to introduce too much noise in what could be a very noisy image if I wasn’t careful.
Learnings – sometimes less is more, and although I’m a little obsessive about detail, and sharpness, and producing as “technically perfect” an image as I can, in my heart I do always come back to just doing what feels right for that particular image or scene. Today, it wasn’t about sharpness or detal, it was about negative space, composition and capturing that rainy, misty vibe.
I think its really intriguing!
Onegav 