Misty Layers | Weekly Photo #95
I’m sure I’m not wrong when I say all creatives experience phases of feeling uninspired at some point and I’m no different. In fact, I’m feeling a little like that right now. Being in between the cold, frosty scenes of winter and the colourful, vibrant scenes of spring means I’m not as motivated to photograph my local woodlands right now and that coupled with being unable to freely travel into London to capture cityscapes means the camera has remained in the bag far more than I would like over the last few weeks.
But that doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing at all. Being out in the woodland is still important to me, with or without the camera so along with my trusty canine sidekick, I’ve still made a point to get out and use the time effectively, keeping an eye out for those early signs of spring and scout the best locations to photograph when spring really starts to kick into gear.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 116mm | 1/40th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Some of you may recognise this photo as I’ve been using it as a banner on my homepage for a while now and I thought it was about time I added it to my Weekly Photo series.
After scouting this area a few times, waiting for the conditions to be right, I was up and out before sunrise on this morning back in September 2020 to take a photo of the wild heather that had recently come into bloom. Having arrived before sunrise, I went about searching for the best composition to photo the heather and as I searched, I noticed the mist down the hill in the distance and decided to include it in the photo. You can see and read more about that photo of the heather and mist in a post I called Late Summer.
When I was done taking photos of the heather, the light was still nicely defused and I realised I still had time to wander closer towards the hillside to photograph this view of the undulated landscape interwoven with drifting mist moving from right to left through the scene. Noticing the light bouncing off the top of the trees was becoming increasingly brighter, I figured I only had a couple of minutes before it became too strong, creating too much contrast in the scene so I quickly found my spot, set up the tripod and placed the camera on top.
I chose my 55-200mm telephoto lens as I wanted to zoom right in and focus on a smaller area of the landscape. With a wider lens, I wasn’t going to get the effect I wanted which was to emphasise the front to back layers of mist and trees in the landscape, becoming softer through the scene, adding a sense of depth into the photo. To help the composition further, I placed the higher, more prominent trees on the upper third to create a subtle focal point for the eye to rest on.
The sky had a warm pastel tone to it and I wanted to include some of that in the photo but being a clear morning, there was very little interest up there so by leaving just a slither of the sky at the top of the frame, I could still get the effect I wanted without introducing too much empty space into the picture. With time not on my side, I manually focused on the trees on the top left-hand third and with the settings dialled in, I took the shot.
Back on the computer at home, I was careful not to add too much colour and contrast into the image as I wanted to reflect the quiet, relaxed feeling I got while out there on the side of the hill. With some considered local adjustments and a tweak of the white balance to warm the photo up a touch, I’m extremely pleased with how this photo has turned out.
I can’t quite believe my 100th weekly post is just around the corner. I feel I should do something to celebrate the milestone. Maybe a print giveaway competition or something similar. I’ll have a think about that!
Next week, I’ll be posting a sunrise photo I took of Eastbourne Pier on the Sussex coast last year and if you don’t want to miss it, why not subscribe to my newsletter by clicking on the link below. That way a new story like this will automatically drop into your inbox every Monday so you never miss a thing.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.