Last weekend I joined my friends for a short break in the Bushveld on the farm Hermanusdoorn. Autumn is here and the veld is starting to prepare for winter. The Bushveld around Vaalwater in the Limpopo Province is particularly beautiful and has the added advantage of being malaria free.
On Sunday morning a group of us took a walk up a steep '4x4 only road' behind our lodge for some exercise and to explore the veld. I of course took my camera with me and I saw so many potential 'compositions' that I got totally immersed in the act of photography so much so that I soon got left behind!
As you can see below this particular part of the Bushveld is covered with beautiful textured sandstone rocks and boulders. Add to that the fantastic variety of plants, bushes and grasses and yellowing fallen leaves that its almost too pretty to photograph! We had a bit of rain the previous day so everything was still damp with little pools of water here and there...
Technique:
I used my little Canon Eos M3 because its really a very good 'landscape' tool...its small and light and thus easy to carry on a hike. I only used one lens, the small 22mm f2 pancake lens that gives an equivalent 35mm 'full frame' field of view.
This lens has good depth of field because its a wide 22mm but even so I always stop down to between f5.6 and f8 and even f11 when I need max depth of field. I have the EVF so its quite easy to frame the scene accurately. I used iso 200-400 mostly to keep my shutter speed as high as possible and to eliminate camera shake - the Eos M3 has a very loud and 'rough' shutter!
As usual I use Lightroom to convert the raw files and Nik Viveza to increase the contrast and also Topaz Detail 3 for some micro detail enhancement.
Below: My long suffering camera assistant posing for a back lit portrait..as you can see the 'road' is hardly visible! I tried to brighten up the shadows but the small built in flash was not up to the task...
Regards, Ivan
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