“Let me bring you songs from the wood:
To make you feel much better than you could know
Dust you down from tip to toe
Show you how the garden grows
Hold you steady as you go
Join the chorus if you can:
It’ll make of you an honest man.”
– Jethro Tull

Strangely, the Jethro Tull song that I chose for my quote kept going through my head for much of this hike. How appropriate is that?

One of the things that I really notice as I hike is the marvellous play of light through the canopy, high above. I’ve talked about this before, how the forest floor fairly glows as beams of light penetrate the leaves.

This light is nearly always present, wit the exception of overcast or rainy days, and even then some stray light seems to make it through.

On this day, an extended 14km hike gave me lots of time to drink in this light as it reflected off the trail and cast a warm glow on the surrounding trees. It’s this wonderful contrast of light and shadow that I enjoy so much as a photographer and participant in the life of the forest. This was a fairly hot yet breezy day and the light was constantly shifting. As I did not have my wide angle lens handy, I resorted to my iPhone to try to capture one of these moments along the trail.

The resulting image was OK, but as I find with many stills, they fail to portray the light an energy of the living forest, so I used a Photoshop plug-in called Topaz Impressions to modify the photo till it ‘felt’ right. Which reminds me, I need to pick up my paint brushes again 🙂

iPhone 7 back camera @ 4.0mm
1/30 sec; f/1.8; ISO 25

For more images like this, please visit my website (images are available for purchase)
http://www.edlehming.com