Posted May 24th, 2010

Warm Glow of Spring

After the long winter, the first really warm weather of spring is always a salve for the soul. This glorious evening the temperature was perfect for a relaxed stroll with long photography breaks, the air was still and the bugs were not yet out in sufficient numbers to be an irritant. The leaf buds that had gone unnoticed just a few days earlier were responding to a few days of these conditions by bursting open in translucent green splendour. Over this hillside meadow the atmosphere was alive with weightless particles, floating lazily and glowing pure white when backlit by the brilliant setting sun. I had to shield my eyes from the intense rays to see anything in this direction and that was a problem for my camera lens, which produced severe flare. This shot should have been a reject, but even in its original state I saw enough in it that captured my joy of the moment that I felt compelled to go to work in Photoshop and salvage a usable ... and emotionally satisfying ... image from it. 
Pentax K10D, SMC Pentax DA* 60-250mm f/4 ED [IF] SDM @80mm, f/11