Searching for Perfection

This particular forest holds some fantastic childhood memories for me, I use to play here as a kid, making dens, hunting deer, (thankfully the home made bow and arrows were never up to Ray Mears standard) and even exploring a plane crash wreckage! It’s also a very good photographic location that I keep going back to; as I feel that I haven’t ‘yet’ done it justice!

My interest is sustained by a wide variety of interesting subject matter, from some great mossy rocks at the south edge where as kids we spent hours playing in cave dens, to very old deciduous woodland with occasional wide open vistas along the a dramatic ridge over my grandfathers land leading to Otley in the valley below. It wasn’t strictly my grandfather’s land as a kid, but we acted as such, and memories of mettle detecting the public footpath and unearthing Victorian coins, really take me back to the fun we had in this small forest.

Anyway, this special place for me still maintains my interest and over the last few years I’ve been trying to photograph it in a way that does my memories justice. To paint a mental picture of this place seems easy in comparison to doing it justice photographically. The trees are contorted, irregular and very difficult to compose to an acceptable standard, and the perfect conditions have to this day eluded me. I’ve been up in snow, rain, sun, I’ve even seen the occasional rainbow in the openings over the ridge, but it is mist and frost that I have desired! Well.... last Monday I had my chance! I was a bit late to the party, (as I had to drop the kids off at school and walk up the Chevin ‘a big hill’) but on the last half a mile of the assent, the mist started to come in! It was perfect, mist, frost and some sun! I ran, Oh how I ran! I arrived totally breathless, allot worse for the run up hill and I was presented with perfection! Oh how I ran around trying to compose something, but could I do it justice, could I, no! The mist lasted for about 5 minutes and I didn’t take a single shot. I couldn’t commit to a composition that justified the way I felt about this place!

Anyway thankfully the mist did stay around long enough to pick out the fantast of sunlit shafts through the trees and I ended up in the far end of the forest looking for colour, and this is what I came up with! I must say it is 80% of what I wanted, but on reflection think I will make this forest my lifelong project, as I enjoy being there so much! I’m going to call it “searching for perfection”

Camera:	Canon 5D II
Lens:	Canon 17-40mm
Recording media:	RAW (digital)

Title:	Searching for Perfection
Username:	jasontheaker
Uploaded:	22 Nov 2010 - 5:55 PM
Tags:	2010, Airport, Autumn., Bradford, Chevin, Deer, England, Forest, General, Jason theaker, Landscape / travel, Leeds, Memories, Mist, Otley, Project 100, Trees, Uk, West yorkshire, Wildlife, Wildlife / nature, Woodpecker, Woods, Yorkshire
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Votes:	17