Slight Return (to Landscape)

Those of you who've been paying attention may remember that I do a bit of landscape photography as well all the macro work. You may also recall that I was having some trouble making decent images with my Alpha 550, which I designated for landscape work about eighteen months ago. To be honest, I haven't made any landscape images worth posting in a long while.

Anyway, Christmas Eve afternoon found me at Shapwick Heath nature reserve for a walk with my son, who was generally over-excited and needed to burn off some energy. On the upside, sunset was approaching and the quality of the light was very good although there was a stiff breeze. On the downside, I had a wound-up six year old with me, and I needed to keep my wits about me in case he wandered into one of the many pools. Overall, not a good set of circumstances for photography, then.

However, I determined to make the best of it. We spent the first twenty minutes or so looking at the Sweet Track - or rather, the water filled ditch in which it lies. This is another of those access issues, but I'm not entirely sure what the rights and wrongs are, so I won't digress here.

Following this, we walked a bit further into the reserve, with me taking shots as the opportunity arose, until my companion got fed up and we retraced our steps. This image was made on that return trip. What drew me to it was the symmetrical shape of the copse and the setting sun catching the reeds in the foreground.

I didn't have my tripod with me and I wouldn't have had time to set it up in any case. The image was shot handheld with a relatively wide aperture - 1/160s @ f/9.0, if you're interested - with my Tamron lens zoomed slightly to 85mm.

I'm not entirely sure about the composition. I experimented with cropping out the trees on the extreme right of the frame, but in the end decided to present it as shot. Whatever, I think this is an atmospheric image and an improvement on previous images that I've posted of this location. I've a couple more acceptable shots to post from this set, which I'll get round to in the next week or so.