探鳥前の風景 / Landscape photography before bird watching
I took a day off from work and came to Ajisu (Yamaguchi city) today with the intention of taking a lot of pictures. There are several scenic spots in this area that I would like to photograph, such as the mouth of the Doroishi River. However, I had to stop the car to take pictures of birds first, so I had to pass them by.
It was not a very cold morning, but there was fog over the fields.
A group of cormorants are heading east in formation all at once. Is there a good feeding ground?
This time I chose the 85mm f/1.4 instead of the usual 24-70mm. I have written before about how I like using this “portrait lens” for landscape photography, and it still feels right. It captures a natural range of vision close to that of our eyesight, while at the same time providing just the right amount of compression. There are times when I get a strangely pleasing sense of depth, and I love those moments. I feel that this lens is also suited to the sense of scale of Japanese landscapes. You can also play around with the F1.4 maximum aperture.
The mouth of the Doroishi River. I really wanted to take a picture of the meandering river mouth with more receding water, but the timing was a little bad.
The autumn leaves are fading and beginning to fall.
The fog has lifted considerably. At first glance, the composition looks like a combine harvester in motion, but this one is at rest.
A chestnut tree standing by a gentle curve. This photo is based on a Lightroom landscape preset. I don’t usually use presets, but in this case, I was able to get something quite close to my image, so I decided to use it as a basis.
A line of cormorants came across the river as well.
More birding after this in the next post.
