I was meeting people down at Black Tar this morning which is an easy thirty minute walk from my house … although it does take me longer when I bring along my camera, which I did on this occasion. I was walking, I had a deadline, and I knew I’d be chatting once I got there so I decided to take my little mirrorless Canon M6 with me.
My reasoning was that if I didn’t use the camera then it wouldn’t get in the way. But, of course, the combination of the low sun and a pleasant walk meant that I did stop to take some photographs. In fact, I did it so many times that I had to speed up just to get down the hill to meet them on time.
It’s strange, I must have done this walk hundreds of times and yet I still find things to take my eye. This bit of gnarled, hawthorn hedging with ivy growing through is a constant fascination. I love the grain of the wood and the morning sun really brought out the textures. I’ll be honest, though, I’ve cropped this picture. I used a shallow depth of field and focussed on the ivy. So the old exposed wood doesn’t have the sharp, clean focus that I would have liked. But that just means that I’ll need to go down there again and take another shot … maybe in monochrome … maybe using film … now there’s an idea …
When I actually got down to the river the sun had gone behind some low clouds. But this gave me the opportunity to shoot right into the light, throwing much of the foreground into silhouette. Of course the reflections on the water were a bonus too.
I stopped the aperture down to f/11 and set the shutter speed to 1/250s. The ISO is 200. My little M6 has a kit zoom lens on it and I had the focal length at the maximum 55mm. The small aperture gave me a deep depth of field (keeping both the foreground and background in focus this time); as well as keeping the, albeit cloudy, sun from dominating the picture.
I haven’t changed the colours and I like the almost sepia tone that the low sun has produced in this and the recent beach images.