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This contest got me excited because I love natural scenery. I have been to a number of places in my life and in each one of them I have found beautiful beaches, woods, mountains, wide open plains where nothing seems to touch the sky and where you could run with your arms outstretched for hours and you wouldn't happen upon anyone. These are the places that I feel most alive, where I feel most free.
Needless to say, it was difficult choosing out images for this post, but in the process I found some that looked pretty shoddy on first glance because they hadn't been refined yet. Don't you hate the way that so often cameras just don't capture every detail that our eyes see, yet our memories can hold those hues and for years in our imaginations, like the memories of a soft loving embrace that you cling to long after it's ended.
I've never found a landscape I didn't enjoy. Ok, maybe that's not entirely true...I didn't particularly enjoy the marshlands in England, but that's because I didn't take gumboots (wellington's) and I got horribly muddy. Served me right for not being prepared.
This context challenged me to go get some new photos as well so I spent three hours hiking and managed to drain my digital camera battery and my phone battery in the process. It was fantastic! I also managed to lose my sunglasses along the way. I found them again, they weren't on my head. They fell off while I taking macro photos of tiny droplets of water on itsy bitsy little clovers.
This contest brought me to some conclusions. I don't have nearly enough nice landscape photos and the shite ones I do have far outnumber the nice ones I've taken in my lifetime! While I was out today, I realised why. You need some vantage. Especially if the vegetation is anything taller than knee-height and well ... short people problems π I ended up taking some of my photos perched precariously on the top of the backrest of benches. It partially worked in some cases.
This image above isn't my best by photographic standards in terms of landscapes, but I have a bit of a fetish for lens flares and the way that the light bounces off the rocks highlighting little edges. And yes, I am also well aware that my lens was dirty - I'd been rock climbing all day so I'm actually not that surprised π€£
Choosing a handful of photos out of dozens is still quite difficult when you have to weigh up which are better in terms of quality, variety, colours, exposure and focal points.
I also couldn't make up my mind between these two beaches, so I figured they both deserved to be in here. I'll let the rest of the images speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy them πΈ
PS: I had to include some freshly mowed farm fields because haystacks are always nice to see on the horizon. Again, not the best photo, sorry - it was taken while driving.
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