Atmospheric nature photography and other visual endeavors. Blog companion of www.PhotoCosma.net
Last month, the 1000th photo by PhotoCosma got accepted on Stocksy United. The collection keeps growing every month and I’m really happy about the quality and variety of them. Here are also the top 5 images from last month – December 2018:
Snow Flakes Falling In Winter Wonderland Woods
Rusty Autumn Mountain At Sunset
Mysterious Forest Lake Reflection
I’ve recently edited a new series of mysterious forest photos. I always take and edit dark mysterious forest photos, but these seemed to fit together so well that I’ve decided to make them available in a Halloween Forest pack on Creative Market. I like that marketplace because it gives me total control over what I upload and how I organize my photos.
Here’s the Halloween Forest pack 2018
If you want it for your dark moody projects you can get it on Creative Market in two different size options:
It’s time for the Stocksy United Top 5 of the month – this time for November. I’ve had a hard time choosing them but I did it in the end with a bit of delay. There is a bit of everything here: adventure under dramatic skies, rare natural phenomenons, extreme cold, beautiful natural conditions coming together perfectly to highlight the beauty of autumn and magical nights under starry skies. Got your attention? Then here are My Stocksy top 5 for the last month:
Man walking on path under stormy sky
Frozen waterfall in cold winter wonderland
Enchanted tree in foggy forest
This autumn has given us a lot of good images. The idea was simple: wake up early in the morning, drive until the roads vanished then set off on foot and hope for the best. We chose days that had changing conditions – rain, sun, clouds so that we could get most out of the day. And it paid off well.
I have chosen “Mountain Peak in Autumn” as part of the top 5 of the month in October so you know it’s a favorite of mine. I really like the contrast between the warm colors of the trees and the cold tinlike colors of the mountain and sky.
This wasn’t an easy image to get. Me and my brother climbed for about 4 hours through a beautiful forest on a steep slope, stopping from time to time but being unable to see much. After finally getting out of the woods one of the first sights was this one, blowing me away. The sun was playing through the clouds so I waited for it to shine a bit on the trees and the cliff that was nearer, but not too much to have harsh shadows. The waiting game was the hardest part because I knew we had more to climb that day, but I knew it was worth it so we remained in that spot until the conditions were just right.
I used my 70-300 mm lens at 92mm and an aperture of f/8 because there was enough light around and I know this particular lens produces the best results at this aperture, with an exposure of 1/250 seconds @ISO 100.
I love that this image “grabs” a piece of that day – the colors, the changing conditions, the giant cliffs and the overall mood of the place. I’m always amazed by this place, the sheer size of it and could spend days just watching the light moving over the cliffs, always changing the landscape.
It’s that time of the month again when I see how the last month has been and make a top of the most notable photos added to Stocksy. October was a great month. Like always, a lot of the photos that I uploaded are special. Adding them to the Stocksy collection makes them even more valuable. My top 5 picks for the last month are:
Man hiking in birch tree forest
Man with lantern on Halloween night
It’s time to make a top of the most notable photos added on Stocksy in the previous month. September was a great month and it’s always hard to choose only 5 of them, but these are my top 5 picks:
Colorful autumn tree in winter
Abandoned football field at sunrise with fog
View from top of mountain on cloudy day
Thats it! If you like what you are seeing please don not hesitate to like, share or comment.
I have curated and rearranged my Stocksy Autumn Collection and I am pleased with the results, so I thought of sharing it with you. From colorful mountain ranges to deep valleys and mysterious forests – it’s all there. It is made up of 91 high quality photos and growing every week. Head on to Stocksy United for exclusive and creative autumn photos:
The month of August was really prolific in terms of accepted images on Stocksy – 28 of them got added to the Stocksy collection and it was really hard to choose only five of them. I did it in the end, and I hope you like them as much as I do. These are my Stocksy top 5 picks for the month of August:
Man in awe in enchanted forest with fog with sun rays
Black moth at night in pale moonlight
Autumn mountain landscape with magical light
Winter scene with man walking in the snow
Night landscape with stars over mountain at night
A couple of days ago I was editing the photo above and I wanted to give it a magical look to make the viewer “feel” as much of what I have felt the moment I took this photo. I also remembered about the whole “purists” vs “editors” war with some going as far as saying that the goal of editing a photo is to make an image look as if it hasn’t been edited.
For me this is not true. I edit my photos to make them have a special atmosphere or to make them transmit something more accurate to what I felt or had in mind when I took the photo.
It’s not that the camera doesn’t render correctly what I see, but there are a lot of other stimuli (like the wind blowing, the sound of water, the sweet smell of the vegetation in the air, etc) that don’t get trough the camera. I use post editing to make an image more vivid or to make its atmosphere a certain way. I know that some might say that the image becomes something “unreal”, but an enhancement of certain features in an image makes it more real and closer to what I saw and felt that moment.
I remember that when I took this photo I wanted to have as much as possible in focus, on the whole length of the waterfall and river that makes the eye travel trough the whole frame, from the rocks in the foreground up to the sunspot above. A dog that stayed with us that whole day stayed still for a couple of seconds, just enough to appear in the frame so I felt that it’s a nice touch to give the photo a sense of greatness. I used a 5 seconds exposure time at ISO 100 to emphasize the flowing of the river and f/11 aperture to have everything in focus. When editing it I added a subtle glow and made the rocks a bit more cold in color temperature and the sunspot above a little bit warmer to replicate the contrast between the dark cold valley and the sun shining above. It made the whole scene closer to what I wanted it to be, to what I saw and felt that day. Hope you enjoy the image. I also made it available on my Stocksy United portfolio under the “Wild fairy tale landscape with waterfall in the woods” name.
For me editing means getting access to a digital darkroom. The process is really not that different to what the great masters of photography were doing back in the days.
PhotoCosma 