Whilst travelling through China during 1999, I visited the Huangshan Mountains, a region that has inspired artists and poets for centuries with its scenery and often misty weather. This image is a little different from most of the shots I took there, in that it doesn’t rely on fine detail, indeed the foreground is shown in silhouette. Also, the weather conditions were clear at the time, which for this region can be rare.
Photographing the Huangshan Mountains
I was drawn to this scene by the contrasts, the dark silhouetted foreground vs the light sky background. Also, the different forms, the sharp distinct form of the ridge, and the trees along it compared to the wispy indistinct form of the clouds.
The image was originally captured handheld on 35mm colour negative film using a Pentax SF7 with an 80-400 mm zoom lens. Very little has been done to the image by way of digital enhancement.
Opinions may vary as to the relative weight given to dark values vs light values in the image and whether the image should be cropped, either in-camera at the time or in post-processing, to give greater emphasis to one over the other. In this case, the image is presented very much as it was composed in-camera with a weighting roughly 2/3rds to 1/3rd, light to dark. To me personally, this feels about right.
This image is part of my China 1999 image gallery. ~KD.