Minimal

I took a lot of photo’s this afternoon as it presented such a beautiful light to work with, at the end of it all I ended up choosing the simplest one. There is something about seeing a windmill against a blank canvas, i’m not sure if this is just a South African thing or they are still common in other countries but almost all my road trips have a memory of passing windmills. This caught my eye and I tried to get a different composition but there were too many things in the way and my lens wasn’t long enough to get the shot I wanted. I walked into the field and took this shot and because I was exposing for the sky and not the foreground it gave me this minimal effect, blacking out the farmhouse, fence and any other subjects that would have created clutter and detracted from the windmill. This is actually a super cool technique and I will definitely use it more in the future. This image is basically unedited except for the crop, I did try and pull up the shadows which did create detail but found it best left as shot. As for the crop, i’m not a fan of cropping and try to use it very sparingly or not at all. I in this case I used a very large crop and it worked as I was not aiming to get a pin sharp image but rather capture the mood of the afternoon.