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
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:
The Stocksy Top 5 of the month for July 2018 has a lot of variety: mysterious dark haunted forests, surreal abstract cosmic backgrounds, moody scenes of trains departing the station, silhouettes at night gazing at the stars and vintage moody still life scenes.
Here is my Stocksy Top 5 for July 2018. Remember to use the “ANDO20” code when purchasing your first photo from my Stocksy gallery!
Man in mysterious foggy forest with lake
Solar flare near planet in space
It seems that the top for last month has taken a turn for the dark. There were a lot of great new additions to the Stocksy collection in June but these seem the most interesting because they go hand in hand and they all share this dreamy dark surreal esthetique. It’s almost a mini series of surreal imagery. The only image that is a bit merrier is the one with the winding road going through the enchanted forest, but it too is full of mystery. Here is my Stocksy Top 5 for June 2018:
Abstract fire texture background
I was away for some time and realized that the month is almost over and I haven’t posted the last month’s Stocksy top 5. Even though it’s really late this month, I had to do it as it has some great images. Either one of this images would also look great as a print:
Dark silent mountain landscape
It’s been a long time since my last post. Hope you all had a wonderful end of the year and hope your new year is off to a good start. I’m off to a new start and lately at PhotoCosma we’ve been experimenting with some new things and also expanding some good old concepts that have become classics for us. With PhotoCosma entering it’s 10th year in 2018 we want to keep pushing things forward and experiment different things that add up to the atmospheric and surreal nature photography that you know and love.
The way things are, it’s always a journey into the unknown. But I am convinced that the knowledge we’ve acquired in the past 10 years will guide us forward into the night and all the pieces will fall into place.
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
This image is one of the favorites of people who visit my website and browse through the categories, so I thought I’d write a bit about how it was made. The timing should be great too – what better time to write about a dark scary image than Halloween?
Although it was June, the weather had been particularly cold so the weather conditions were great for mysterious foggy forest shots. Me and my brother had been wandering all day through the forest. The weather changed a lot of times from sun to rain so this brought a lot of opportunities. We ran like mad searching for light rays to capture and hid everything away looking for shelter when rain came pouring down. This happened throughout the day so later in the day we were pretty tired.
After chasing sun rays through the forest we reached a part that we didn’t know really well and were amazed to find some giant old trees with big twisted roots. It was really one of those special moments, one in which we felt our steps were guided there. One of those old trees stood out and I knew we had to make something special with it.
I’ve mounted my tripod in a strange position so I was afraid the camera was going to fall over, but it was worth it. I used a wide angle lens at 19 mm, an aperture of f/8 and an exposure of 1/3 seconds because the woods were really dark at that time. I had used hands before in photos to create a creepy surreal atmosphere and to make it seem like some kind of monsters were coming out from the ground. This time I used the hands of my brother coming from the sides of the frame and to the center. The final shot is a composite of 4 photos to make up for the fact that I didn’t have so many “hands models”. I love the darkness, the surreal feel and the overall mood of this photo.
That place really felt surreal and special so I am glad people like the image. For those of you who want to license dark scary surreal images, you can find it exclusively here: https://www.stocksy.com/1334681
Glad to announce you that one of my photos made it on to the book cover of the Spanish version of “The killer in me” book by Margot Harrison. The bottom part of the image is a forest image I shot in 2015:
http://www.photocosma.net/portfolio/G0000wlyRjYcPmEY/I00001RjVgVyO8uU
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.
PhotoCosma 