Blidworth Woods - Photography Week 12 (2017)

With rainy conditions for most of the day it was a surprise to see some sunshine during the late afternoon. Normally this is good news but in wooded areas direct light tends to increase the contrast creating very bright highlights and deep shadows.

In these circumstances it is tempting to fight the conditions using techniques like HDR, but often it is best to work with the light and use it for a compositional advantage. For example, a highlight can be the subject of the image:

Alternatively, compositions can be selected where the light source is behind the subject:

Often, I find myself willing the sun to shine but occasionally waiting for the sun to go behind cloud is the better option. These two images were taken moments apart and have different qualities due to the change in sunlight:

With plenty of rain earlier in the day there were many reflections in the standing water. Focusing through the surface of the water and into the reflection created a number of abstracts studies which I later converted to black and white.

I am not totally sure what I think about the results, which is often the case with abstracts, but I do prefer the first image with the light flares. These blooms provide a textural quality to the out of focus area which could be described as giving the image a better bokeh effect (1):

(1) Bokeh comes from the Japanese term for blur or haze and refers to the aesthetic quality of blur produced by a lens. Good bokeh is produced when the blur is pleasing to eye and bad bokeh when it is distracting or unpleasant. Good bokeh is often used to describe out of focus highlights including light blooms but the term can apply to any out-of-focus area of an image.