Winter Light - Winter Daydreams

There is something about the indistinct forms of a winter's day which create for me a mystery and challenge: the photographer's task is made harder by the lack of our life blood - light.  There is more to be half illuminated, colours are less saturated and subtle and shape plays a different kind of role amongst indistinct forms.

I'd like to explore this with a few examples from my collection of the last few days and from my archive to illustrate the potential of this low muggy light.

Light was scarce on Sunday morning as I made for Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire - fog pervaded as the sun rose meeting the contours of the land my car would dip into the murk and occasional lift on higher ground above the gloom, into an emerging sunrise and a picturesque sky.  The day was summed up in a view I got over one hill where the valley floor ahead was foggy and the skies above broken with cloud.

As ever click on pictures to see the full size versions in Flickr





With HDR processing the ambiguity continues above and below the billowing chimneys of the local power stations. The land itself gets harder to make out too. The cold condenses the water vapour into the blackest of clouds - further enhanced by the sun behind them, and the industry and meteorology combine in a strange unnatural scene.  So much as I love the subtle indistinction of winter - my first example is distinct - but unusual - I hope it delights and grabs your eye as much as it did mine.

In Clumber Park itself the trees shroud the mist and this is the stuff of fairy tales and dreamscapes - more so given the age and size of the vast arboretum there, near St Mark's Chapel.  The stately home once associated with these gardens was demolished in 1938 - its presence is seen in the terraces but the absence creates a void in the fabric and feel of this park.  All the more for the evocation of a dreamscape.

There are vast oaks here - venerable - they tangle together to create a wild wood at a distance which is rather more orderly when one walks through it.




The oak stands as a guardian in our woods and especially in the area of Clumber which is part of the ancient Sherwood Forest - a place where trees have names, histories and people speak of them as though they have personalities.  This entanglement - resolved more clearly in the opaque mist reveals the more daunting mystery of these woods.

There are also cedars of great age here - they stand with huge limbs - even more animalistic in my view - and they make such impressive counterpoint to the oaks.


 

This photo taken in the fog remnants of an afternoon the next day shows the limits of colour in this kind of light, nearly flat as a pancake, helped and muted further by the lenses of a telephoto - 500mm - which also helps concatenate the composition.


 

I'm only saved here by the bull rush seed heads and the dashes of reflected sunlight in the water: the rest is shape and warmth or otherwise of the washed out colour.  Again there's a haunting quality - somewhat wistful and punctuation is provided by the bold but slight accents.

 

Six weeks or so before Christmas, on a foggy day I caught a gloomy river Idle scene almost monochrome, but that same week a sunset revealed how much colour there was in the Autumn sky.  Now Winter's cloud obscures the sun for days on end.  How quickly that fades and how urgently we wait for Spring to bring it back - but in the meantime there is something to be said for Winter photography.  Tomorrow I go out in snow - a different challenge completely.