Since I first saw Ansel Adams' photograph – Aspens – I've wanted to take something similar, not just in terms of the subject matter, but also something that captures the massive resolution and pin-sharp clarity of his work. And while the latter (unless I invest in a 5x4" plate camera) will probably always elude me, the ‘feel’ of that image (or others in that series) is probably something I can aspire to.
This series of images is reasonably close to what I’m after but I’m not convinced that they’re all that great, mostly I think because I had to do to much work to them to bring them in line with how I imagined they should look. I took the original about a week ago under less than ideal circumstances. We’d gone for a walk and the sky was flat and dull – a rather typical British winter sky – and I think, if I were to do this image again, I’d need a slightly more dynamic original to work with.
And finally; I’ve included three versions because I couldn’t decide which I liked best. That said, I think that the full colour version is probably the easiest to look at, and the black and white version the least good – mainly because there wasn’t really sufficient contrast in the original (i.e. this version, to me at least, looks rather too artificial).
