Racing the light

Snowdrops are now out in force and so I decided to see if I could improve on last years failed attempt when I missed the most ideal window and light to photograph them. These are my first attempts for this year though I intend to post with some better shots when they open up a little more as they aren't quite in full bloom in these shots. The reason for racing the light? Well the site was a 20 minute walk away to uni and with little over half an hour left of daylight by the time I intended to arrive to be in place for the best light timing was tight. Shadows were long and the light was soft with even small stones glowing warm orange. I had arrived started shooting and within 10 minutes the sun had dipped below the far hedge engulfing everything in shadow, shutter speeds dropped, and the light was gone. That was my window, only 10 minutes. Back lighting is only possible within the last half an hour before sunset anyway so short of arriving 10 minutes earlier again this time I had would have been about it. This is the first time I have taken the time to put myself in a place to get the light I wanted and use it rather than let the light control me. Learning to control exposure in these situations means I need to keep on my feet as there are things I still need to learn about this but if I can learn how to best use this amazing light I will be half way there.

Snowdrops are quite hard to compose in that there are many of them in clusters sometimes making an image look messy yet a single snowdrop is so simple in appearance that images sometimes look boring.