Exploring through Black Hill Trail
It was a gloomy day with overcast. But I promised myself that I will get up and go out to shoot landscape no matter what. I did miss the sunrise though, since it was overcast, I guess I didn't miss much there. Black hill park is fortunately very close to where I live, so it didn't take me much long to get there.
I usually run long distances on Sundays, and one day I came across three logs in the water with fog. That was very appealing to the photographer in me, but I kept running and decided to come back one day to capture this. This was months ago, and today is my attempt to capture that image, since I didn't plan anything else.
Entering the park, I came across the wooden walk bridge (very slippery) and while I was watching my step I saw a gradual S curve formed by the bridge. Immediately I thought, there is a picture here, and did all kinds of attempts to capture it. It felt forced. I thought there was a picture but I couldn't come up with a composition there. Disappointed, I turned back to pickup my bag, and there it was. A perfect composition right when I decided to move on, it was just behind me in the direction I walked in from. As a blessing, the sun came out for extremely short duration and I was lucky enough to capture this image.
It was a good start, right at the beginning of the park. Now, I get very conscious when people are around and I am trying to get into the wet marsh to get an image. But this was about me trying to get out of my comfort zone. Next stop are the logs that I wanted to capture. Luckily the black hill park is quite big, and the part I am exploring today is the west end of it. Before I got to those trees, I did go off trail into marshlands to capture a weird looking tree stem. Now I have the subject, but the composition didn't work out. Previously I would force myself to make it work, but I accepted that there I couldn't find one that day and left. Then the trail opened up and that's when I found those empty trees with a nice calm lake reflecting it.
When it comes to Fall season, I like capturing the transition of the trees into nothingness. Here the trees are surrounded by other trees that are full of leaves and color, but soon enough, they will join them too. To my left, there was a remote mini island with fall foliage starting to show. This was little bit difficult to setup, I was on high ground and going off trail meant standing on steep slippery slope of wet grass. I gambled and went anyways, plus I needed telephoto lens for this. No way my wide lens was going to capture what I wanted to stand out. I think it worked out a little.
If I could go down further, the perspective would be better. I might try this shot again when its safer to slide down the trail. The big objective was to somehow show up and capture, and I am glad I did. This was wonderful and very refreshing. I am contemplating to make this a weekly theme. Regardless of weather conditions, I go out and shoot something that catches my eye. There is always something worth capturing.
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