Austria Workshop – The Lake at Kufstein

The lakes in Austria tend to be green – a bluey, greeny Jade kine of colour.

But on an overcast day, they weren’t really shouting “colour” at us – so I decided to create a series of black and white images from our morning walk around the lake on the German border.

The passers by reassured us that the wind would clear the are of mist, but alas it never came.

So we had to re-think our approach, doing a more “nature” based shoot than the stunning landscape we had in mind.

First off – shooting with wider apertures across misty lakes made for a decent shot – here focussing on the tree in the foreground left, the background fades with mist and lens blur.

Another shot on the same theme – this time the subject is a lot further away so the lens blurr is less pronounced.

Ferns always look good – these were tired and brown, I knew a mono with the reds/oranges increased would make them stand out.

Square crop of a bench… again with very wide aperture of F1.8

Long shutter speed on a tiny stream which fed the lake – this was 30 seconds with a 10-stop ND filter on

Still scenes and blurry people

Not entirely sure why I like this bin, but I do!

Lots and lots of fungi around at this time or year

Strange little fern like plants – with Matt Netherwood in the background

Red berries became black with this mono conversion

So there you go – when the light’s not playing ball, it’s often time to change tack and get creative with nature. Also, try shooting RAW but change your camera style to Black and White – that way you’ll concentrate more on the shape, light and dark areas than the lack of colour… which is the most important thing in most photos really.