We’ve been down in the south west of the UK for a few days, staying on the Devon Somerset border, visiting good friends, and it turned out that our AirBnB was on a remote farm between The Quantocks and Exmoor, in some beautiful countryside. As we drove in and out, I was drawn to the lanes, barns and beautiful reeds growing in the fields. Their colour and texture a striking contrast to the browns and greens around them.
On our final day, as we returned to the AirBnB, my family kindly dropped me off and I took a meandering walk back across the fields with my camera, to see what I could capture.
It was a wet and stormy day but this didn’t put me off. Wet weather generally gives more moody photos, in my experience, and I have never been afraid to trust the tech and get my camera wet. I was also trying to be more purposeful about my black and white photography and the weather suited this perfectly.
To aid this, I had finally got around to setting up one of the custom modes on my camera to use a customised (higher contrast) version of the Sony BnW profile. Over the years I have heard many people rave about being able to turn their mirrorless cameras into a BnW camera but have never bothered with it. I have always been happy to shoot in colour and do my conversion in post. It didn’t seem to hold me back but boy what a difference it was having it in the viewfinder. While it didn’t really change the way I took photos it did, for some reason, make me see compositions in black and white as I walked down the lanes and across the muddy fields. The dreich and moody weather probably helped too I guess.
Yes I got pretty wet and muddy but it was also a very productive and enjoyable walk in nature. I didn’t see another soul during my two hours out and got the following shots I was pretty happy with too.
