Stillness

Dawn on a lake in Bavaria. Hardly a breath of wind. The peace and serenity of reeds, leaves and water.

Unconscious references

When reviewing images at their full size, I am often struck by the way that they evoke art that I have drunk in over the years. For instance, I feel that my enjoyment of depictions of Chinese nature, particularly in the medium of ink drawings, led me to make this choice of focusing on the silhouette and tracery of these shoreline plants. I am not very well versed in gardening, but I imagined that the lower plants with spear-shaped leaves might actually be young bamboo?

The tree, which I included in order to provide a composition from upper left to bottom right, is delicately leaved, so much so that it appeared to me to be Japanese. I certainly don’t know, but the oriental feel was very strong in me at that moment.

Choices

Despite the modest light level, I could only risk making a low ISO, higher quality capture, at the same time as keeping a reasonable depth-of–field, because of the pre-dawn dawn stillness in the air. While the water was moving faster and therefore became pleasingly blurred, the vegetation remained still enough for the slow speed. That said, some blurring is visible, particularly in the shoots growing in the lake.

Settings

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: 24mm f3.5D ED Perspective Control

Focal Length: 24mm

Focus Mode: Manual

Aperture: f/8

Shutter Speed: 1/2.5s

Auto Focus -Area Mode: Single

Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority

Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV

Bracketing set to 5

Metering: Matrix

ISO Sensitivity: 160

Mounted on a Tripod

As the temperature rises here in Paris and Summer eases into action, this image reminds me of the joy of rising early and enjoying the cool of the day, particularly if on a lake or at the seashore. I hope that your plans may offer that opportunity soon.

Copyright Paul Grayson 2015