Perfect Grey Days
After what seemed like a glorious autumn, winter started and what winter means in this little country I live in is a plethora of grey skies. The clouds have been hovering over the land sending drizzle, rain and a multitude of shades of grey. As I was setting up my tripod in the forest in the midst of another rain shower, a man with his dog approached me. He asked me if I was able to see anything beautiful at all? I replied that I did indeed. He went on to tell me that he found the winter forest in these conditions utterly depressing. I understand, of course I do. Last winter I felt so utterly disenchanted after autumn with its colorful gifts that I too did not see anything of beauty anymore. But something changed, I changed. To feel disenchanted for almost 6 months per year, is to be ungrateful for this life that I have been given. Winter might only last 3 months, but the forests are mostly bare from mid November until the second half of April. That is a very long time to feel depressed every single year. Perhaps if I were 20 I would not feel the urgency of living life to its fullest every second that I can, but I do feel this urgency. I can not afford to sit out winter until finally the foliage is back on the trees. That would mean I would spend half of my years not making images, in the waiting room between autumn and spring. Snow is now a very rare occurrence in this country and so I am not about to sit on my hands with my camera locked into the closet until finally the white blanket appears. It might never come. I don’t wish to devalue my time in this season.
The sky might be grey (even though today, for the first time in weeks, the sun is shining), but this does not mean there is no beauty. Grey might even be beautiful, if you decide to work with it instead of resisting the fact that this is not the glorious epic light photographers are addicted to. In fact, why should you care that the sky is grey? I know that all those videos with endless tips on better photos and the best light will give the impression that there is such a thing as bad light, but it is in fact just different light. Bad light is just a label and a label is a decision. If you decide differently, you will see differently.
Grey winter days are considered to be boring, but what if you were to simply go out and be open to the beauty that is still there? Albert Einstein said : “ There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.The other is as though everything is a miracle.” So what will it be?
A few weeks ago, at the very end of autumn, I went to the forest. I drove through the fog for almost an hour and when I got to the forest, hardly any fog was there. I did not care. I grabbed my tripod, knowing how valuable it is to me to have a few hours to myself, to have the ability to pick up my own life little by little and I was therefore determined to enjoy myself. I was there, this was a gift in itself. I was going to enjoy it.
I passed a few other photographers who were packing up, disillusioned about the conditions. I thought to myself that what we had been through last year, when life reminded us that it can be over in a second, even at our age, had actually given me the gift of appreciation for moments spent doing something that I love. I know that I simply can not afford to call a location, a moment or a weather condition bad, because this will mean that I will consciously label something as bad which I could have also chosen to see as a gift. To practice photography is a gift in itself. It gives us the opportunity to connect to beauty. Beauty however does not just come packaged as red sunsets or purple sunrises. It does not just exist in epic mountain scenes. Beauty is there for those who CHOOSE to see it.
And so, I walked further into the forest and lost all track of time. I was so grateful that I was able to be there again doing the thing I love so much. Who cares if the fog was lingering elsewhere? And who says forests only look pretty in foggy conditions? I made the best photographs of the year that day. And then later that week I got treated to very foggy conditions in another forest. I knew that I should cherish this as well, but not more than the rain or drizzle or the soft light of grey days.
Bad light is only a label that photographers believe in. I have been photographing in the forest almost every single day lately, in the pouring rain, in drizzly conditions, on dull grey days and I have been having so much fun. I had the forests almost to myself, I marveled at the things I had previously missed. Buds are already forming on the branches, the ferns have turned reddish brown and are now turning black, but new ones are appearing already, trees are showing their silhouettes and mushrooms still seem to be appearing everywhere. The moss is glistening, red robins are swinging on the swaying branches, the sound of the wind is different now that the branches are bare, no longer do I stay dry sheltered by the foliage of tall beech trees, I am exposed to the elements just as much as the trees themselves, but what can be clearly felt is that the forest is as alive as it is in Spring, it is just in a different fase. That what is resting is preparing to thrive again in another season.
Nature does not label itself, it just follows the cycles of life. We use negative or positive labels for things that are in and by itself completely neutral. The grey skies will undoubtedly be here for many more days, but if they will be bad light days, is up to you. There is more to life than just the boxes we have made for ourselves. Be prepared to try something else if you don’t seem to be inspired in the landscape. Why label yourself a landscape photographer if you feel uninspired by the landscape in this time of the year? Labels are not a given, they can be questioned. Bad light is only bad to those who believe it is. Grey is only dull to those who choose to see it that way.
The choice is yours. If the label you assigned to yourself prevents you from taking photographs in the winter, you might consider if this label is serving you. If you think of yourself as a nature photographer and you feel very uninspired in the winter time, dip your toe in another genre. Photography is a practice and it is the practicing that is part of the passion, at least it is for me. Try if you can let go if those learned assumptions about the right light, the right place and the right time. Depending on your labels, rain might be good or bad. Inherently rain is neutral, so it can be anything you choose. It might be utterly inspiring or it might be depressing, but no matter how you label it, this is a result of your interpretation, not of the nature of the thing itself.
Even the holy grail in forest photography (fog) is not inherently good. Fog might be considered to have only benefits when photographing in forests, like the simplification of the scene, the way it tidies up the frame and the way its adds mood. But....have you ever considered that it decreases depth, it decreases colours and contrast, it flattens the scenes. Believing that fog is what you absolutely need when photographing in a forest is extremely limiting and it is a false assumption. Try to let go of those labels of what is considered the best light, the right conditions or even the label you have attached to yourself and your photography. If a label gets in the way of enjoying your passion, it serves no purpose.
Try this to get your mind unstuck. Find 10 things that you find uninteresting and photograph them in an interesting way. This might just lead to acknowledging the limitation of the labels we use for everything and just maybe, you will see that the world is full of miracles and you become one of those people in the second group that Albert Einstein mentioned ; those who see miracles everywhere.
May your Christmas and New Year be filled with miracles
As always I would like to express my gratitude to all of you who have been supporting me, who bought one of my prints, my eBook and who have trusted me to be their teacher.
If you feel compelled to support my work, please consider buying a print or my eBook The Magic of Forest Photography. Prints are now available for many more countries in the EU. If you would like to buy a print and can't find the image in my print shop, please let me know and I'll try to make it available.
