Looking east from Bourtonbridge Drove on Queen’s Sedge Moor: sunshine on dew-soaked grass, and a dark bank of fog in the backdrop.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens used in DX (= APS-C) format to give 450mm; 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Standard V2 picture control; Queen’s Sedge Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 26 Apr 2019.
SOMERSET LEVELS: SOME KEYWORDS
And finally – some keywords that will often be mentioned in this archive series:
Droves: to avoid crossing other peoples’ land when accessing their own, the farmers constructed a series of tracks, known as droves, between the fields. Some of these droves are now metalled roads and many persist as open tracks – all of which allow wonderfully open access to this countryside.
Rhynes: the fields are bounded by water-filled ditches – which both drain the ground and act as stock barriers. Hence strange landscapes – where fields appear quite unbounded, except for a gate with a short length of fencing on either side of it, where a bridge crosses the water-filled boundary ditch to provide access the field. These small wet ditches communicate with larger rhynes (“reen” as in Doreen), which in turn flow into larger drains, e.g. the North and South Drains in the Brue Valley. All of these waterways are manmade and, by intricate series of pumping stations and flood gates, all of them have their water levels controlled by local farmers, internal drainage boards or the Environment Agency.
Pollarded Willows: the banks of the rhynes were often planted with Willow trees, both to help strengthen the banks and also to show the courses of roads and tracks during floods. These Willows are often pollarded, i.e. their upper branches are cut off, which results in distinctively broad and dense heads to the trees. Pollarding keeps trees to a required height, while ensuring a steady supply of wood – more important in the past than now – for fires, thatching spars, fencing and so on.
FATman Photos 
Remarkable light contrast.
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Thanks, Mick! The look of this I think derives both the scene itself and the fact that I photographed it with a 450mm (ie = x9) telephoto, so looking at only a small fraction of the scene as the human eye would see it. Wide angle lenses are the go-to for much landscape photography, but I think telephotos have their place too, ie for looking at small parts of landscapes, and especially for far off, hazy horizons etc. 🙂
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Ah, I like telephotos for landscapes, too. I lugged he wretched thing around loads of mountain trails in Nepal, but it was definitely worth it. And the effects such as you’ve got on this one are a great reward.
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