Pastel Shades

icm photograph

making of this photograph

It had been raining all day and I was sitting in my office at the computer editing the previous days work, I looked out onto a damp world and it was one of those shall go out or make another cup of tea and carry on editing. It was mid afternoon and it was already looking dark under the heavy rain clouds. I made the decision to go, when I got there it was looking bleak but I ventured out along a very muddy trail.

I shot this at dusk, with a fine drizzle in the air. At this time of day the silver birch trees take on a luminosity . I was attracted to the trees in the foreground and how they wrapped around each other. The focus point was on the front tree. I was using an 85mm 1.8 lens. The camera was set to 100iso. I didn’t want any extravagant movement just a gentle upwards pan. With an 85mm not too much movement is required. The exposure was dictated by the fading light. The lens was fully open giving a shutter speed of 0.3 of a second. As I knew the type of shot I wanted to make it was a question of making several pans until it looked good on the back of the camera.

There was very little post processing to do. I gave it my preferred 5×4 ratio crop and a slight high pass sharpening. I do like how the ferns are picked out in the foreground. The trees themselves look like they’ve been drawn with oil pastels.

I was stood on a very muddy track to make the picture and by the time I had finished I had sunk into the mud, over my ankles. It was all worth the effort.

image and text ©Geoff Franklin 2021

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