Photography Lovers End of Year Contest

Hi Photography Lovers Community! For anyone who doesn't know me, I am an amateur photographer taking photographs in Richmond Park, London. Like many landscape photographers, I spend too much time looking at weather apps. In my case, searching for the signs that mist might form overnight. There are no obvious vistas in the park, so my photography has become very much about intimate landscapes and small scenes. Having some mist or atmosphere really helps with this type of subject matter.

This competition is a great excuse to look back on the year and remember all the wonderful mornings that I've had wandering around in the twilight and the mist and the murk, hoping for perfect light as sunrise approaches...

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Spring Brook

Spring is possibly my favourite season. I LOVE green! Those new, bright green leaves that burst from their buds are perfection. The willow on the left of the image here fell into the brook in November. I was pretty devastated, as I've photographed it many times since I bought my camera, and I was very fond of it. On this morning the sun had just cast it's first rays onto the banks. There wasn't a breath of wind, and the reflections in the water were perfect.

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Winter at the Pen Ponds

January and February were really bad for photography - we had a lot of rain, and a lot of grey skies. Any half decent looking morning had to be ceased upon, and this was one such morning. It wasn't cold enough for a frost, but the mist was lovely, and the dappled cloud added some gorgeous interest to the sky. The tree in the middle right of frame was blown over in a freak August storm the previous year, which was rather sad, as in it's upright position it had been a very photogenic shape. Thankfully, it is still alive, and grew some new growth over the spring and summer, so it will be interesting to see how it looks in a few more years once it's settled into it's new, horizontal resting place.

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May Full Moon

Last year, during March, April and May, we had amazing misty mornings that coincided with the full moon, if not on the day itself, then a day on either side, which photographically was rather convenient. I never plan full moon compositions, because if it's misty then it really changes how a scene looks, and from my experience, any planning tends to be pointless. My approach is to roll up to the park on my bike, and wander around until I see something that I like. When I composed this shot, I was slightly concerned about having such a large lump of tree in the immediate foreground, but once I saw it on my computer, I was rather happy with the result.

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High Summer

This shot was taken in July. The acid greens of spring have faded into more sombre dark greens. The river banks had taken a hammering over the winter months, with rain and heavy lockdown footfall. No one was allowed to meet indoors, and the park was VERY busy as a result. The trampled and compacted bare muddy banks from winter were healed, and transformed into beautiful, lush grassy growth.

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No colour sliders were touched in the processing of this next image. The only tweaks were to remove a tiny dot of an aeroplane flying into land at Heathrow Airport, and to reduce the highlights in the sky a fraction. It's almost exactly the same as the raw file straight out of camera. Anyone who knows me will be aware that I lean towards quite muted and delicate pallets. A shot as colourful as this one from me is rare.

PINK!

It was possibly the most incredible sunrise I've ever seen - the entire sky was on fire at this point - reaching across above my head to the easterly horizon. The pinks and reds in the clouds reflected down and turned the mist pink too. In all honesty I had been late arriving at the park, and I wasn't at my chosen destination when I took this, I just decided to stop walking and take a shot before the light went, which it did a few minutes later. This tree lined up with the epicentre of the sunrise, so the tree was photographed. In truth, anything more complicated compositionally might have been too busy for this sky. The conditions are the photograph, the tree is just there as a point of reference. For a short while, the entire world was completely pink and red. It was a sight to behold.

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The next couple of shots are from an amazing morning in November. The park was freezing cold and very misty. There was some high cloud - which is generally a good thing as it softens the sunrise, and also can prevent the mist from burning off too quickly once the sun is up. This can prolong the time window for photography, before the light gets too harsh. There was a beautiful covering of frost, and the conditions were very nice indeed....

November Sunrise

This was taken just as the sun rose above the horizon. The beautiful brown bracken ferns were sparking with frost, and the high cloud muted the sun's rays. There was no wind and the water was like a mirror.

The mist thickened further with the rising sun, so I decided to head to one of the old oak woodlands to take some shots....

Rivendell

I've photographed this composition a handful of times, but I've never seen it look as lovely as in this image. The sun was up, but the high cloud was acting like a giant soft box. The light rays were so gentle - just enough to cast a beautiful warm light through the trees, and onto the grassy woodland floor. For me, the conditions couldn't be better...

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The next 2 images were taken on another beautiful November morning. November was an amazing month for photography this year... Again, it was very cold and frosty (by UK standards anyway!) and there was beautiful mist smothering the park.

Frosty Brook

The composition here is one that seems to work in any season and is one I've shot many times. I've never taken it when the conditions have been quite like this though. Sunrise was still quite far away, but the frost and the mist seemed to bounce the ambient light around, making the world look brighter than it usually would at this time in the morning. I love how the frost and the light make the world look almost monochromatic.

I wandered a bit further upstream, to this beautiful little spot...

Sunrise by the Brook

I spent ages here - taking photos as the light changed and the sun slowly rose. I had a flask of tea with me (an essential item - I am soooo British when it comes to tea drinking) and I sipped tea and took photos, watching the sun's rays slowly start to catch the mist. I love how the orange sunlight contrasts with the blue tones in the shadows, it was very pretty to watch the mist billow around with the changing light.

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My last photo for this years competition is a little different from my usual subject matter. I was starting to feel like my creativity was a bit limited by just photographing the park, so I went into central London with my camera on my way to a dinner party at a friends house in Barbican, to grab some shots beforehand. Fortunately my friends and my husband are very chilled, and didn't mind that I rocked up for dinner looking like a bedraggled photographer, after wandering around London in the cold for several hours. :)

The Shard

I love The Shard. It's possibly my favourite modern building in London. All that glass makes it look so space age. The December sun was setting to the right of the shot and I love how it is illuminating the square building. I popped a 10 stop ND filter on this one, to smooth out the murky, foreboding water of the Thames, which was angrily flowing back out to sea.

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Next year is definitely going to be a year for photographing central London some more. Plus lots more park photography too! The weather over the Christmas holidays has been truly awful. Grey grey grey and rain rain rain! Fingers crossed that the NY will bring with it some sunshine and mist.

Thanks for Looking! Here's to 2022!