Photography is simple

This winter I am (was, hopefully when spring EVER decides to arrive) concentrating on minimalism. I'm trying to keep stuff simple and excluding as much as possible in my shots. It is an interesting exercise for sure!

So this morning it was foggy again. What?! For two days in a row? Foggy conditions are perfect for those minimal shots. Mostly because you don't have to worry about background clutter. It immediately cleans up your frame. All you have left to worry about is what to shoot and your foreground.

I have a lot of lone trees on my way to work. And some of them are only 'available for shooting' when it is foggy. Just because of all the background 'noise'. Take for instance the second picture as an example. This tree grows in a shallow depression just along side highway 8. But in the background there is a forest. And that tree line is cutting right through the middle of this little tree. Sometimes I wished I could grab my ladder or something to shoot this tree from up high but for now this fog will do just fine. Sometimes you just have to wait until the right shooting conditions are in front of you. Landscape photography takes patience.

I also found out that too much foreground detail does not really work all that well, when you are trying to pull off a minimal shot. So excluding as much of it is always an easy solution. And by thinking about your composition as simple as 2 rectangles on top of each other – one for the sky, the other for the ground – it is easy to place that subject into an interesting spot in your frame.

Sometimes photography does not have to take long and is just simple. Remember kids to overexpose when you're shooting in foggy conditions. I had to overexpose 2 stops to get a decent histogram.

If you've been following this blog or my work for a bit then you will have noticed that I love post-processing. Well for a change this has almost no processing at all. Almost straight out of the camera. Yes 'almost'.