It’s another rainy day, but let’s see the positive in it – it’s not snowing. And I was ok with it, I had an idea for the flood plains and overcast weather was just the ticket.

Walking around in the flood plains is like walking in a labyrinth. You go in one direction until you hit water, then you turn and take another direction and walk until you hit water again. So I was just walking around quite randomly and at one point I was following the waterway and stopped to look at the embankment to find a gap in the forest so I could change direction. Suddenly something came from behind and ran right past me – so close I swear I could feel the air move against my leg. A badger! Normally when I see a wild animal run, it runs away from me. But this one ran at me and then past me and disappeared in the forest, leaving me standing there in utter surprise. That was probably the closest encounter I’ve ever had with a wild animal, any closer and it would have its teeth sunk in my leg!

Anyway, the reason I was there, was to shoot the half fallen barns that are quite numerous in this area, and use the ”painting with camera” technique in the birch forest with the forest floor covered by lily of the valley. I knew they wouldn’t be in bloom yet (but they are very close, give them a couple of days of sunshine and the forest will explode with them) and that was my idea, to have a totally green contrast to the grey/white birch trunks.

This ”moving the camere during exposure” (=painting with camera, panning without moving subject, call it whatever you want) is a bit funny. I don’t have any real appreciation for it, because I think that when you’ve seen more than two pictures taken with the technique, you’ve seen them all. But every once in a while I like to use it when the subject is right, and the birch forest in overcast weather was just right.

It’s amazing how green the nature is right now. Everything is still fresh and now in the rain, the colours were incredibly saturated. I normally add a bit of saturation to my pictures but now I almost had to dial it back – nature provided all the colour I needed.