In the autumn of 2023, my friend and I went on an annual tour exploring the landscapes of Europe. This time we took the ferry from Calais to Dover to drive to a location that was long overdue: Dartmoor National Park. We've researched this place so much, that we barely ran into surprises upon arrival. That's one of the downsides of the availability of online data, maps, and photos that have been shot of most places. When we meticulously research a place, we become so familiar with a location without even having visited it! That causes us to naturally walk in the footsteps of those who have physically been there before.
But when you're well on your way, hiking along the few ancient woodlands, Dartmoor still has the surprise, and awe comes crashing down hard. No amount of research prepares you for the feeling of walking into what can only be described as a movie set. Landscape photography is about seeing as you explore the feeling a scene or composition evokes. And this foggy morning, oak trees were just what I needed to create this panorama image. Here we have 3 vertical images shot side by side on a Nikon Z6 at 135mm. The idea was to capture an image that looks like it was shot on medium format. I like the less elongated aspect ratios, the sharpness, and the indescribable je ne sais pas that these images evoke. In composing my woodland images, I tend to walk by slowly with a telephoto lens attached to my camera and tripod, looking to either side to hone in on that shot that just captures your attention. I loved the bare branch leading into the frame from the bottom left; here it seems to connect to the tree to the right, which in turn is holding hands with the one on the left of the frame, where it leads the eye down and into the center again. This compositional technique, done by careful juxtaposition, visually connects elements of a scene to make pleasing connections that were just not there. It's tricking the mind into seeing patterns where there are none; the art of playing with pareidolia.
As for post-processing: there's panorama stitching, careful dodging by hand and restricted by luminosity masks, and advanced color correction techniques with hue masks, to slightly push a selection of the color palette into one direction while nudging another into the opposite direction. The goal of this is similar to luminosity masking: to eke out tones and colors in order to more closely fit the idea I had in mind as I captured the image while thinking nostalgically about all those fantasy films this scene reminded me of.
