Friday, January 05, 2007

risky or just crap?

...initially Pen and I both had the same macabre reaction to this piece of wood on the floor of Whinlatter forest - we both thought that it was covered in dead mice!
In fact holes had been bored through a wooden post and rope been threaded through the holes.
This picture was taken in near darkness - mid-afternoon, deep overcast sky and thick coniferous forest. I set the sensitivity on the camera to ISO 3200, and also set 2 stops of exposure compensation (equivalent to ISO 12,800) - the shot was hand-held at 1/20th sec (please excuse the techy stuff if it means nothing to you).
What I like about the shot is that it is pretty close to how I perceived the original scene - I could, of course, have wacked the flash on, and done all kinds of subtle (or unsubtle) things with the lighting that would have made a clear and colourful shot - but that would also have been a "lie" - as it is, the picture is gloomy, ambiguous, almost colourless, but I like the melancholy feel of it...
See here for some more recognisable and accessible shots taken in the Lakes in December '05....
click on the picture to see a larger version of it

3 comments:

emma said...

My word! I thought they were slugs. In fact it reminded me of our back yard. Slugs are everywhere round here. When I first moved here I never saw a snail, now there are literlly thousands of them. Snails seem somehow less yuk than slugs, the way they carry their home on their back. I often have to scoop slugs up from the kitchen floor if I get home late, I can't bring myself to squash them, so I throw them out the front door, because I know the trail they leave is like a slug version of 'sat nav'. But within a few nights they seem to find their way back, which is quite remarkable given I live in a terraced house and they have to make it all the way down the street, down the alley and back through 2 gardens to get to our back door - you gotta admire their determination. I've even got one living in the car, I guess it must be an escapee from a trip with some garden rubbish to the tip. I've never seen it, just it's silvery trail. Phew - glad I got that off my chest. Anyway, remarkable picture as always Tone.

tone the blueshawk said...

Emma - I can see what you mean about slugs, and I also agree snails seem more pleasant. I lived in a house with slugs in the kitchen, and the bathroom as an extension beyond the kitchen. I once staggered down in the middle of the night for a pee, and in the darkness I stepped on a slug which squished between my toes. It took me ages to get the slime off my foot, and I always put the light on after that... Txxx

Domenica said...

Your picture goes to show that we all see things differently, and that there is no right or wrong way of percieving something. Some times we see what we want to see, and sometimes we choose not to see. It is all a matter of perception.