A photograph that made me think – Haze Gazer by Colin Russell

This photograph, taken by Colin Russell is of a landscape of the Carraghan mountains on the Isle of Man. This image interests me because it’s clean; the misty weather conditions created an interesting composition –creating a sense of minimalism. There is a cold colour palette in the photograph, making me feel peaceful and relaxed. Hypothetically, I feel that my feelings reflect the shape of soft peaks; their gentle slopes sliding away into the visibly extinct basins of the mountains.

A strong perspective is created from this location – as the mountains are seen to slope away into the fading horizon. Russell used a 70 – 200mm lens, set at 109mm, f8, to create a rich depth of field– giving viewers the sense of a never-ending landscape.

In particular, this photograph made me think because I observed what I thought was an image artefact, or dust on the camera’s sensor. Only until I realised it was a person standing on the brow of the mountain – doing the same as Russell. This relationship between us and our surroundings gave me a sense of melancholy – it shows us how fragile life is and how the landscape rules over us and not necessarily, how we rule over it.

Josh Dury

L1 Photography, University of the West of England