Photo of the Week 2025-03-17

 

As I work to improve my woodland photography, I've been investigating the images and words of those who's work I admire. Recently, much time has been spent listening to online interviews and presentations by British Landscape and Nature Photographer, Joe Cornish.

 

When I listen to Joe describe how he sees the elements of a scene work together and play off each other it resonates with how I feel myself when I'm out working a scene or location to create something that captures what drew me in.

 

' late fall snowy snag '

Far better spoken that me, with a vocabulary born of his formal education in art and refined over his decades of work as a photographer, I am responding "yes" and "right" to myself often as I read and listen to Joe.

 

There are other photographers that I have learned of who I follow, read, watch and listen to. Joe and many of these have helped me understand and embrace the woodland theme, it's challenges, opportunities and rewards. I've even managed to find acceptance and satisfaction with some of my own attempts in the genre.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-02-05

 

' once upon a clearing '

' a place to meander '

 

On my Boxing Day foggy morning walk, I detoured to check out 'the clearing', a magical spot that caught and has held my interest since my first romp though the woods of the Revolve Farms property.

It's not an area cleared of all trees, but certainly it's character is very different from the adjacent woods.

The ground is soft, a considerable portion of it is covered in reindeer lichen and moss that feels quiet underfoot. Clusters of juniper dot the spaces between trees, suggesting that you meander your way around. 

 

 

 

 

On this day, the clearing was particularly mystical. Fog and barren trees combined with a limited colour palette to create something special that I attempted to capture in camera and bring to these images with some touches in post processing.
 

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2020-09-28

 

This week's post comes as a bit of lesson, a reminder or tip if you will. It's not breakthrough, just a basic, fundamental reminder ...

 

TIP: When you are using any of the 'AUTO" options on your camera, remember to keep an eye on what values these auto modes are setting, you may find them unacceptable, or you might have accidentally switched out of an auto mode altogether.

The back-story:

 

I'd been working to fixate less on the technical aspects when out shooting and just let myself react more to the scenes in front of me. I may have become a little too reliant on the camera to take care of the exposure settings, at least on my causal walks. I didn't pay enough attention and some otherwise decent images from a wonderful outing in the misty morning woods suffered :-/

 

I have my Canon EOS M5 set up by default to use Auto ISO. The camera also has a customizable "Dial Function Button" on top of the body at the right side. I've had ISO set as one of the options for this button as a quick way to make adjustments when in manual mode. Why are these details significant? Well, on more than on occasion I have managed to bump this DF Button, changing ISO a 'notch", which happened to be from Auto ISO to ISO 25,600. I'm not sure if I did this accidentally with my thumb while adjusting exposure compensation (the dial beside it) or in just general handling of the camera as I walk around with it slung over my shoulder. Somehow it happened and I didn't notice when I was out in the bush one morning to capture some wonderful light.

 

As expected, the resulting photos suffer greatly from noise and poor detail but I decided to see to what extent I could salvage them with Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI. They are nowhere near printing standards, but almost make passable images at web resolution and I'm hopeful that publishing this post will help me remember to check camera settings more often while I'm out shooting.

 

glowing leaves

 

a forest trail

Note to self:  Don't fixate but also don't forget to watch your exposure settings

 

DJE

 

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