This was one of the rare occasions where I dug out my summer lens, the venerable 16-80mm zoom. It renders very sharp images, but the slow f-stops from 3.5 to 4.5 make it quite unsuitable during our current short and dark winter days, especially when the sky is overcast. But here I could stop down to f8, resulting in sharp grasses and florescences but still blurred background.
I’ve always been interested in reflections and the corresponding circles of confusion that the backlight brings out so strongly. But photographing for decades, up to now I had never deliberately misfocused – sharpness for a long time was like a holy cow for me, as I see it as one of the genuine characteristics of photography to render the scene sharp and full of details. This small creek I found 2 weeks back during our hike in the Berchtesgaden national park, and the quality of the autumn light I found transported best in this blurred rendering of the scene.
This image is probably more conventional, and it was easy for me to accept. Backlight is the light I cherish the most since decades, however it eluded me often back in the film days. Chimping has improved my skills in dealing with this light form very much, and now I find more time to deal with the colours in this light situation.
