I was recently nominated by a friend on Facebook to take part in a “7 Day Nature and Landscape Photo Challenge Posting Thingy“. As you can tell from the title of this challenge it was a fairly relaxed assignment and since I did not have time to take a new shot every day I decided to trawl my archives and choose some of my favourite nature and landscape photos. I am not a big Facebook user and I keep my circle of friends fairly limited so I thought I would post the seven photos I chose here and explain why I chose them.

First up is a fairly recent photo which I posted along with a few other shots on a previous blog post. As I said in my original post “Top Withens (or Top Withins as it is sometimes known) is widely accepted to be the inspiration for the location of Wuthering Heights – the Earnshaw family house in the book by Emily Bronte“. Out of all the shots I took that day I feel that this had the strongest composition and evoked the sense of bleakness which as was looking for.

Second is a shot which I really like but on closer inspection has flaws which annoy me. Compositionally I think it is fine and I love the warm colour of the sun against the cold sky – though believe me the sun may look warm but it was bitterly cold up there! I also like the star effect coming from the sun. This image did need to be post-processed better though as the ground is not dark enough to hide the track in the bottom left. Also, if you look closely, you can see a blemish probably from a spot of rain on the lens.

I love this shot taken at Otley Chevin one Autumn afternoon. I think the colours, textures, and shallow depth of field create an image which evokes that Autumnal feeling.

This was taken from the summit of Monte Baldo which overlooks Lake Garde in Italy. A cable car takes you from Malcesine most of the way up and the views across the Italian Alps are stunning. What I like about this photo are the overlapping tones of the mountains and the small clumps of clouds just above them. The only distractions are the con-trails in the top left but my limited Photoshop skills left me unable to satisfactorily clone these out.

This isn’t necessarily my favourite image of the seven but it is possibly the most instantly striking which is why I chose it as the featured image. This was actually taken using a film camera (my Nikon FE) and I boosted the contrast during post-processing after scanning. I was trying to emphasise the shapes and patterns and to fill the frame which I think I have done successfully.

As you can probably tell this was also taken with film rather than digital and has had very little (if any) post-processing. I’m not really sure why I like this shot as much as I do – maybe it is the curve of the hills which nicely separates the clouds from the sheep?

This is the oldest of the shots I have chosen and was taken using my old Nikon F65 – a camera which has long since found its home in a landfill site somewhere. Again post-processing was necessary to clean it up a little and to crop it so that the composition is as I wanted but it is instantly recognisable and I like the mist slightly obscuring the Eiffel Tower and the horizon.

If I had spent a bit more time looking through my archives I am sure that one or two of these wouldn’t have made the final cut but these were the seven that instantly grabbed me as I scrolled through the thousands of photos on my PC.