Photos from Monday Morning
The weather Gods have been quite kind recently. Last weekend we had amazing fog in London (check out my previous post to read about the foggy photography here) and we've also had some good photography conditions during the week.
Monday morning looked promising on the weather apps, so I cycled up to the park and headed to one of my favourite corners. It was nice and misty, and there was an unusually large number of contrails criss crossing the sky. That, and the patchy high level cloud, helped soften the sun once it appeared above the horizon.
First I went for a composition that I've taken before. I liked the contrasting blue of the sky, with the orange tones of the bracken and grasses in the foreground. Opposite colours usually work well together...
IOS 100, 40mm, f/13, 1/25 sec
I decided to have a play with a different composition of this spot, so I popped on my cheap as chips, second hand, wide angle lens, with the focal length set to it's widest at 18mm.
Some technical stuff - this image was bracketed and focus stacked, using 6 images. This helped handle the high dynamic range of the scene, and the closeness of the bricks in the foreground.
Most of the time I forget this lens is in my bag, but when I remember it's there I always really enjoy using it. I just love the distortion and the sense of movement that the wide angle gives me. The sun was up by this point as I'd wasted quite a lot of time crawling around in wet grass and bracken trying to get the composition just right.
I started wandering back in the direction of where I'd locked up my bike when I spotted this scene. By now the whole world was looking very golden and misty.
I couldn't be bothered setting up my tripod again, so I set my ISO to 250 and grabbed a hand held bracketed shot to deal with the bright sky as I didn't want to loose any details.
And that was the end of the good light. The sun rose higher, and the mist burned off, and the world looked normal again.
Thanks for reading and have a good Sunday!