Holly's Blog: Brief 1 - Exterior Location

I went for a long walk today after the rain had stopped, about an hour before sunset. I'm not complaining about the copious amounts of rain we've had recently because I've been thinking of photographing shadows and reflections of nature for my 'Exterior Location' project, and obviously when there is lots of rain, there are lots of puddles with reflections on them!

The sun was shining after the rain cleared so this created some really lovely reflections in puddles and shadows on the ground (and everywhere else).

I've never really stared for a long time at one before, but when you really look at a reflection in a puddle, it's crazy!! it's like there's a slightly distorted photograph of the sky and clouds or a tree on the ground in a pebbly, leafy frame. At one particular part of my path, there were 3 puddles in a row with a tree reflecting into them and it was like a triptic you'd see up on the wall in a house or gallery but all natural! A picture of a tree split up into 3 frames. I tried to capture it but i couldn't quite get it as clear and as in focus as i would have liked from the distance i was stood at and by the time i'd walked close enough to it, the reflection of the tree had gone and the puddles were then just reflecting the sky! Reflections always change according to where you are positioned. Even a fraction of a movement will change the reflection. Anyway... I got the shot but it would have worked better if i had a better lense for it!

The sun started to set and this is when all those gorgeous, warm, autumn colours come out to play! I love it when the sunlight shines through the leaves and you get those lovely yellows and greens and they cast shadows on each other.

I was also taking shots of a big pile of logs i found and the light hit them perfectly at that time. It brought out the lovely warm tones in the wood. They were mostly pointing in the same direction and it looked like a family of logs were watching the sunset and i found it really cute!

I also like silhouettes of trees and buildings against the sunset sky so i took a few snaps of that aswell.

Here are some of my shots....

I have cropped and rotated this image so that the fence in the reflection in the puddle is the right way up. I think it looks really interesting. I would have preferred to zoom in closer so that there was just a tiny bit of grass at the bottom, the reflection in the puddle and a little bit less of the tarmac at the top in the frame. If i had done it like that, it would be harder to see exactly what i've done and cause abit of confusion.

The reflections of the sky and the clouds in the puddles reminded me of a painting. They look like tiny brush strokes of all different tones.

This one is another rotated image.

I wanted to capture a little bit of the tree that was casting that huge shadow over the entire field! I love the colours at this time of year.

Got my shadow in this one aswell......Lee Friedlander style!

Shadows on the leaves.

These guys looked like they're watching the sunset.

I saw this little guy poking out of the ground in the middle of my path randomly. It caught my attention so I got down low and took a snap. Used a wide aperture to get that shallow depth of field. (don't quite know what this has to do with reflections or shadows)

Rotated so that the reflection of the tree is the right way round.

The family of logs i told you about earlier......I'm not too happy with this shot......

Watching the sunset.

This took me a few attempts to get the shot I wanted. I needed to get the shutter speed slow enough to let enough light in as it was getting dark and i needed to select a small aperture in order for everything to be sharp and in focus, but not so slow that i'd loose the sharpness and start to get camera shake. This is where a tripod would have been handy! Anyway, I bumped the ISO up quite high to compensate.