Project 23 - Soft Light

Back to active photography. Spent a day in the Peak District in the Matlock/Bakewell area that I have known for many years both as a child and an adult. The advantage of knowing an area is that you can make a fairly good guess where the conditions that you want can be found. In this case round the village of Stanton in the Peak.

The weather was pretty good with the wintry sun being shrouded by wispy clouds so that the overall contrast in the image was low but at the same time there was an interesting sky that added to the final results. All images were taken with the sunlight coming over my shoulder which allowed for the depth of blue in the sky. Worked the images in Lightroom 4 beta version so as to get the best result possible which I assumed was the purpose of the project. Had the sky been covered completely in cloud then I would have taken the image to reduce the amount of sky in the image but worked on the remainder to again get the best result.

The attraction of this image was the farm cottages together with gardens in the left foreground with the gap in between those and the trees on the right leading the eye into the picture towards the distant hills. The cloud formation adds further interest.

The pattern of the stone walls was the part of the image that caught my eye. The copse of trees on top of the hill balance the farmstead right centre of the image. It was a deliberate choice to include the barbed wire fence at the bottom of the picture to provide the viewer with a sense of scale whilst at the same time to make the viewer aware that the land is private and man-made.

Here I have used the two stone pillars that presumably supported a gate at some time to encourage the viewer to again look into the image both to the mid-horizon where the trees offer a sense of distance between them and the distant hills. I tried the image both as it is shown but also bringing the base of the wall to the bottom of the picture. I chose the former because the rutted track is in contrast to the apparent smoothness of the fields beyond. Although no human being can be seen in the image the presence of man is strongly indicated by the ruts made by a tractor and the structure of the stone wall.

I enjoyed this project although I was fortunate to have some variation in light  as different cloud covered the sun. Had this not been the case I feel that the structures either man-made or natural that gave pattern and interest to the images would have been sufficiently strong to still get satisfactory results.