Relaxing in to autumn

Autumn seat

Autumn is my favourite season and this photo rather sums it up for me.

At this time of year as the sun sinks lower in the sky and the atmosphere cools the light becomes richer and the possibility of ethereal mists can add a dreamy quality to landscape scenes. This is the time of year to get out there with the camera and make the most of the conditions.

This photo was taken in the walled garden at Kellie Castle in Fife which is relatively local to me and was taken on a sunny autumn day when I simply decided to get out and about. It shows that we don’t need to go far to capture intriguing photos. I went out with no clear plan, other than a determination to capture some images. There is a walled garden at Kellie Castle and I went in there aware of the surrounding trees and hopeful of perhaps getting a shot of the castle surrounded by the colours of autumn. There were one or two options for that which, of course, I captured but as I then walked round the garden this seat caught my attention.

The colour of the seat stands out well against the backdrop of the leaves which offer up an impression of a soft patchwork blanket. The leaves on the seat also suggest a soft cushion contrasting with the hardness of the seat itself.

There is something about autumn which encourages me to slow down and relax into the season. I think this photo captures that sense of the desire to sit down and appreciate the beauty that is all around.

If you would like to keep a sense of the relaxation the autumn inspires why not hang a print of this image on your wall, at work or at home. You can buy a print here.

 

 

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Refreshing, inspiring and prompting thought

Mont Blanc Massif

This image is available to buy from my website as a fine art print. Perhaps at this point I should be clear that if you buy a print, it will not have my signature watermark so it is a clean image.

There are differing opinions about what constitutes a fine art photograph and this is largely due to the fact that there is no universally agreed definition. Fine art photography seems to cover a wide range of subject matter and can almost be seen as anything that isn’t otherwise categorised, such as: photojournalism, science photography, portraiture etc. A broad consensus seems to lie around the idea that a fine art photograph is more generally about the vision of the photographer and their creative input to produce an image they have preconceived in some way. Personally, I think there’s more subtlety to it than that. Any time I take a photograph, be it documentary, portrait, product or anything else, I am always thinking about how I want the final image to look and I think that’s true for most, if not all, serious photographers.

Taking all of that as read, I believe that fine art images are those that refresh, inspire and prompt us to think. They are images that communicate and hold an inherent beauty in the eye of the beholder. Essentially they are images you would want to hang on your wall and look at, and the image above, of the Mont Blanc Massif emerging from parting cloud, hangs on my wall at home.

I took this photograph a few years ago when visiting Chamonix. There is an element of serendipity about it as I happened to be in just the right place at just the right time to capture the drifting clouds revealing the mountains beyond. To get to the image above, though, I needed to do some work in Lightroom to create the mood and atmosphere I remembered at the time I fired the shutter.

I appreciate that we don’t all buy images on a regular basis but if this photograph refreshes and inspires you to thought, then next time you are looking for a picture to hang on the wall, why not remember this one and maybe also look at the others I have available.

Thank you.