Early Light, Cannock Chase

I applied the quote from a famous US adventurer and photographer, Galen Rowell, who said:

"You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either."

I'd been studying the OS map and found a place on Cannock Chase where there was an indication of a tower. So I set out before dawn, in the hope of an interesting image.

Well, to say I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. The 'tower' in question was a small wooden structure. If it had originally been designed as a fire tower its purpose had been superseded as the pine trees surrounding it dwarfed the construction!

However, I loved the way the first light lit the delicate latticework of branches in this silver birch. To the effect I did a fair amount of post processing in Photoshop, duplicating the layer and applying a Gaussian blur, then masking the trunk and larger branches to bring back detail. Some judicious tonal corrections were also applied.