Stocksy Top 5 of the Month – July 2017

It’s that time of the month when I bring you a selection of my top five photos on Stocksy from the previous month. It was a tough decision because there were a lot of new uploads the last month and every one of them was carefully chosen. These are my Stocksy top 5 picks for the month of July:

Abstract colorful light near spider web

Tree under starry sky at night

Aerial view of country road

Cave entrance

Sun rays shining trough enchanted forest with fog

sun_rays_in_foggy_forest — Sun rays shining trough enchanted forest with fog

alien at night under starry sky — Alien silhouette at night under sky with stars

The last month was really hot where I live. There wasn’t much to do in the day as long as photography goes because the temperatures were (and still are) unbearable so I took this opportunity to do some night photography and also test a new piece of gear that I’ve got.

A moonless night followed so the timing was perfect. Me and my brother have some places that we have done night photography before but no two nights are the same. The thrill of night photography can’t be matched by any other type of photography, maybe because in the dark we feel so exposed. We looked for interesting trees and angles at daytime because once the light drops it’s really hard to move and find subjects for the images. Some of the photos resulting from this shoot will probably surface on this blog too at a latter time, but it was the photo above, “The Visitor” that first caught my attention.

There was orange light that came from a nearby town and that was polluting the night sky so there was no way it would get better no matter how long I waited, so I decided to use it to my advantage. The strange eerie orange glow still let some stars be visible so I placed the subject in the center of the frame so it would almost be framed by this light. I used the flash of light to make the silhouette visible and it seemed to me that this looked like an alien apparition scene. I used and aperture of f/4 with ISO 3200 at 20 mm at 30 seconds so the stars would appear as points for this one.

The blue light adds a bit of contrast and makes me think of Sci-Fi, as does the field and stars. I love the mystery that comes with this one, it’s a great addition to my night photos.