Featured Photo: Grove of Shadow and Light
William Neil has been working on a series for the past couple of years he calls “Impressions of Light” or something like that. He is trying to create unusual, impressionistic and intriguing visions of common outdoor photography subjects, something I’m also interested in. He uses a variety of camera techniques, one of which being slow shutter speed panning and/or zooming. A couple months back he had an amazing image in Outdoor Photographer that he took in a Yosemite redwood grove. It really struck a chord with me. This is my own attempt at something similar. It falls far short of Neil’s, but I like how the motion blur smooths out much of the distracting background forest clutter while emphasizing the lines, texture and lighting of the trees themselves. All the blur is in camera. In Photoshop I created several layers that were copies of the background image and then experimented with different combinations of blending modes (multiply, overlay, soft light) to increase color density, contrast and general mood.
