A drought then a deluge

click photo to enlarge

When this present spell of snow came I eagerly went out into the lanes, fields and village hunting for photographs. For four consecutive days I came back with shots on my memory card, none of which were any good. I find that I sometimes have periods like this when I can't see the images, and the more I try the less I succeed. But, I've been involved with photography long enough to know that if I carry on looking and shooting, eventually things will come right.

And so it proved this time. On the fifth day I gathered a clutch of minimalist images, and on each subsequent day I've been happy with at least one shot I've taken. Today's was taken on the same day as yesterday's image, when the light seemed to brighten but the fog thickened to the point where the horizon began to be difficult to discern, and earth and sky started to merge. It gave me a landscape that included very little, and so I needed a focus of interest. And what could be better than my wife in her bright red jacket, a small point of brilliant colour against the almost monochrome background!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +0.6 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

On the other hand...

click photo to enlarge

...I have five fingers.* What I meant to say before that joke intervened was (with reference to yesterday's thoughts on what morning light can bring to your photography), "On the other hand you can go out in the afternoon and just deal with what ever fate sends your way". A couple of days ago fate dealt me snow with fog sufficiently dense that the other side of a very large field could barely be seen, but not so thick that the sun wasn't making its presence faintly felt every now and again. Looking at the scene I immediately thought of Whistler's paintings - his tonalist style, his nocturnes and his waterscapes. Or perhaps Mark Rothko, a painter who said there was no landscape in his works.

I probably wouldn't have taken the shot but for the sun. Its brave attempts to force its way through the murk gave a weak and watery spot of interest to the sky. That seemed to be just enough to work with the snow covered field with the odd pieces of earth showing, and the hedges, trees and buildings of the village on the horizon. So I framed a 1/3:2/3 split and took my photograph of not very much.

Minimalist photographs, "photographs of nothing", appeal to me, but aren't always easy to spot. Here's another one that I took last year by the sea where they can more often be captured, and here are some more thoughts on the subject from an early blog post.

* A Steven Wright joke.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On