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This is the path leading to the Saint Columba Falls in Tasmania. It is a lovely short walk through the tall fern trees and rainforest. The midday light was a bit too bright for waterfall photography, however, on the way to the falls I was much intrigued by the illuminated fern leaves and their shadow pattern on the ground below.
On the way back I stopped in a couple of places to see if I could photograph a kind of a "primeval" scene, as this is what it felt like walking through the rainforest. It was actually quite dark along the path with the thick growth shielding the way from much of the sun. That made the highlighted leaves stand out even more and the dark areas provided a great natural framing and vignette. The light and condition made the shot very straight forward and I only used a polarising filter to add extra saturation to the colours and to remove glare.
I took this photo as a single frame and the shadow areas required a bit of extra processing work to bring out detail while keeping the noise to the minimum. What I wanted was to be able to see a little detail but for it not to detract from the main elements - the fern leave and their shadows on the path.
May be it stems a little bit from movie culture (think Jurassic park), that many of us may associate rainforests with that ancient primeval nature. I just love walking through one and this scene was one of those magical finds that could have easily been missed along the way. It is funny how my love of nature and love of photography keep kind of pushing each other along. It was my love of nature that enticed me to pick up a camera. I wanted to be able to photograph all the wonderful sights I encountered. In turn, it is photography that has made me appreciate nature even more and opened up new ways of seeing the world around me and discovering beauty in larger and finer details.
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