Visually, the most beautiful time of year? The whiteness of the clouds, the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the land. Bathe in the qualia, wallow; relish. Out with the camera, polarising filter fixed, giving a true representation of what I see through my sunglasses. No tweaking of saturation or vibrance in Photoshop – only a slight tweak of dehazing and texture sliders to pull out more detail from shadows and highlights. The most important thing with landscape photography – to faithfully capture what I saw and felt at the moment.
Below: approaching the end of my lane. Agriculture abounds. It is dry for the time of year; farmers need to irrigate.
Below: to quote Charles Trenet: "Au ciel d'été confond/Ses blancs moutons/Avec les anges si purs". However, to quote George Michael, "All that's missing is the sea". Somewhere south-east of Jakubowizna.
Below: along asphalt new from Machcin II towards Dąbrowa Duża (left) and Gaj Żelechowski (right)
Below: classic Chynów landscape; verdant vegetation of late May, flawlessly blue sky and the dusty track that leads on to Adamów Rososki and Grabina.
Below: round the corner from home, the road to Grobice. New houses are being built here. But just look at that sky... that dreamy sky...
Back in the old days of film photography, my favourite stock for days like this used to be Kodachrome 25 ASA, ultra-fine grained film, or failing that, the 64 ASA version. The film needed to be just slightly underexposed (by a third or two-thirds of an f/stop) to get the best colour saturation. Once taken, the film was sent to Kodak's labs for processing and returned by mail in the form of 35mm slides, in cardboard mounts. For use in slideshows. Getting a print from the slide was horribly expensive and in 95% of the time, disappointing. Today, you can digitally tweak colour temperature, exposure, saturation – dozens of parameters – in Photoshop until you end up with an emotionally satisfying image that precisely matches your qualia at the moment you took the photo. Back then, you got one chance to get it right.
Experiencing such scenes, I get feelings of anemoia (nostalgia for an era I didn't live through) or exomnesia (memories from outside my time and place). Good. They bring deep joy and a sense of connectedness with the Infinite and Eternal.
This time four years ago:
These are signs, tokens
Sunset's trip
This time 12 years ago
The importance of the rucksack for the body
How I almost saved Barack Obama
This time 17 years ago:
Some anniversaries missed
Twilight in the garden
This time 19 years ago:
Hissing of the summer lawns
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