朝もやの風景 / Scenery in the morning mist

Following Geihoku, I have been photographing landscapes, but since my subject matter has recently shifted more toward birds, I have fewer opportunities to photograph landscapes. As I have traveled back and forth between the two, I have come to realize that each has its own difficulties. Birds are not always in the same place, so there is a strong element of treasure hunting. Instead, you get a certain amount of satisfaction just by being able to see a bird and take a reasonably good picture of it. On the other hand, landscapes are always there and do not run away like wild birds do. Therefore, I am rarely satisfied with just taking pictures of them, and I really want to be able to take advantage of the weather, light, and other random happenstance.

In my opinion, photographing landscapes is a more disciplined and stoic activity. When you think about it, birdwatching alone is an activity, but I have never heard anyone say that landscape watching is a hobby. In other words, bird photography is a twice-delicious activity. (However, if you bring too much landscape-photography-like obsession into bird-watching, it will become a practice of chance squared.)

In autumn, when the mornings get colder, morning haze often appears in mountainous areas. In fact, I have only a vague sense of whether it is mist or fog, but in meteorological terms, it seems to be judged by its visibility: haze is defined as having a range of 1 to 10 km, and fog as having a range of less than 1 km. But isn’t this classification based on the assumption that you are inside the haze? A cloud-like mass of tiny droplets of water spread out in front of me, but it was too low to be called a cloud. It is often so white that you cannot see through it, so perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a fog.

I call it scenery, but it is my habit to want to take pictures of birds when they fly.

山と雲とカラス Mountain, Clouds and Crows
Nikon D750 + AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

If you look closely, you can also see birds here…. Both look like a pair of crows.

The 85mm f/1.4 is well known as a portrait lens, but I also like using it to shoot nature and landscapes (I don’t take many portraits to begin with, but for some reason I have it). It is a medium telephoto lens and only goes up to f/16, so it is not suitable for depth of field, and I could argue that you don’t even need f/1.4 for that purpose, but I like it anyway. It is also very useful in the previous post on Geihoku.

朝日の差す田舎の風景 Scenery of the countryside with the morning sun
Nikon D750 + AI AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D IF

Clouds, or rather fog.

山と低い雲 a mountain and low cloud
Nikon D750 + AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

A henbit.

ホトケノザ henbit
Nikon D750 + AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

This fog can disappear in just a few minutes, so the image is usually changed when you discover it and then move on.

水路の風景 landscape of a small canal
Nikon D750 + AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

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