Let there be light

Sunshine certainly benefits some subjects. In the tangles of gorse at the quarry it helps define the twisting stems and the shadows cast add to the scene and help create separation and depth making the confusion somehow easier to read. At times the light looked almost artificial and some of the shots have a theatrically staged look to them.

I realised a while back that it was the shadows, not just in the gorse but under the trees and over the rocks, that made for the most interesting pictures at the quarry. To the extent that I was using them as compositional elements, as in the shot below where they break up negative space and help frame the image.

While I was roaming the quarry yesterday I made a different sort of picture. It doesn't fit in with the style I have been using there, but it has given me food for thought.

The quarry project is pretty much done now. I was starting to repeat myself yesterday. It's time to live with the pictures for a while. The Blurb bookmaking software is handy for collating pictures into a sequence, as well as for making the on-demand books. I've been playing with the format this time to present things differently to a simple set of pictures - one per page, page after page. So the book (virtual or real) becomes the finished thing. Once I had decided how to lay out the book it began to dictate the sort of photographs I took. Which helped me concentrate my mind.

However, as some of the pictures which work in their own right didn't fit into the book I think there is scope to make a set which stands on its own. As part of the project has been about the different ways we perceive the same scenes and objects, it seems fitting that there could be two possible ways of presenting the photographs. I suppose, as with processing files and selecting compositions, it all boils down to making choices and decisions. Which can alter as our moods change.

Back in the wood today I slipped into a mode of photographing fallen trees. I hadn't planned to, and a telephoto zoom would have been a better tool for the job, but my short telephoto had to do. I'd set off intending to go elsewhere with just a wide zoom and the telephoto, but the biting wind made the shelter of woodland seem like a good idea!

Again I was graced with sunshine, although it was intermittent as the wind was blowing fluffy clouds along. I tried to use the shifting light to highlight either foreground or background to make the prone trunks stand out. that proved too tricky for me. Even so the side lighting gave the trees in the distance form and texture while I played around with depth of focus to either compact the space or expand it.

Much as I enjoy working with these natural subjects I'm starting to feel bogged down. I need to shift gear to look at something different. A more animated or less monochromatic subject would be ideal. Even a return to the sandplant felt stale. It requires a change of season for the plants to begin to grow there before I'll find anything that I haven't already worked on. Unless it gets physically altered in some way.

While failing to catch some fish the other day I relieved my boredom by trying to take some self-portraits. This dragged me out of my comfort zone as I was using fill flash. Although I only spent about a quarter of an hour at it I learned a fair bit. And even more during the processing. The shot below is the pick of the bunch, and is a combination of two different processing strategies - one for the sky and one for the rest. It's not a 'straight' documentary photograph by any means, but it's not intended to be. It's the sort of illustrational thing I would have been more than happy to send to an editor when I was writing for fishing magazines. There's a more about this photograph on my fishing blog.

Being all 'quarried' out and with the sandplant project on hold I can either get back to the beach or do some more fishing. Work and the weather might be the deciding factors!

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