Netherlands Wildrijk

This was a nice surprise. As I've concluded some shots at sunset earlier, the trip back home felt rather satisfactory. My coastal home is right at the top-end of the Netherlands, so there really is one main road that leads to it. To combat the monotony of driving the same road as I always would, forgetting all about the amazing sunset from before, I decided to steer clear of the main road.

On one of these backroads, I noticed that the foliage started to grow thicker as the night drew in. Then this huge, 300 year old beech tree loomed over the road.

To my surprise there were still bluebells about amongst these grand trees. Of course there was an image in here somewhere. But I don't like to photograph the forest, since most of the images I take there look cluttered and distracting.

Thanks for looking.

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Personally, I don't like to photograph the forest, since most of the images I take there look cluttered and distracting.

So I tried something else I had seen. The idea was to make the beeches look daunting; like figures in the night, out to grab you. I used intentional camera movement for this part of the image. Next, I would want the foreground to be tack-sharp, so a couple of exposures for focus stacking made sure of that.

The difficult part was to get the balance of the exposure just right under the fading blue daylight, but the ISO 400 seemed to do the trick with the wind being dead-still. Those tones meant a great analogous colour contrast which I would later work with in post.

here wasn't a parking space, but there were also no other cars to be seen. I figured to park beside the road and head into this small forest I had never heard of before... Some adventure!