Mist and Drizzle

As a general guideline, broad daylight and blue skies make for some pretty boring landscape pictures…

The best photos are very often acquired in the sort of conditions that many wouldn’t associate with photography.

Winter Fern at Kingley Vale

Nikon D810, 14-24mm f2.8 Nikkor at 24mm, 3 seconds hand-held, f13, ISO 100

09.43, 1st November 2015

When I shot this one, I was up in the Kingley Vale Nature Reserve, photographing the giant old yew trees at dawn. Incessant drizzle, early mists and grey clouds filtered the sun and softened the light, prolonging the shooting times well beyond sunrise so, unusually for me, I found myself acquiring shots into mid-morning.

The soft back-light in this image is sifting through an opening in the forest canopy and the dark autumnal colour palette of opulent gold and moss green, provided by the soaking wet foliage, saturates the image. The low light levels in the dense forest allowed me to use a three-second, hand-held, ICM (intentional camera movement) technique that produces the impressionistic interpretation of the scene you see here.