Malaysian tea plantation

While low light action forms most of what I’ve shot over the past few years, I’ve been able to spend some time shooting in a more contemplative way. Photography can be a relaxing pastime if you want it to be. Below is an older photograph of a tea plantation I shot while visiting Malaysia. It was a cool morning in the Malaysian highlands, and something about the undulating hills with their clusters of tea drew my eye. If memory serves correctly, I first tried a standard horizontal composition, but found a vertical composition more engaging.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have realised that the vertical composition (in this particular case) captures the near-middle-far relationships that Thom Hogan (amongst others, no doubt) has described. We have the tea leaves at the bottom of the frame giving the picture a sense of physical proximity (you might feel as if you can just stretch your hand out and touch the leaves), while the curves of the hills and valleys in the middle of the frame form a transition to the hill far away, partially obscured by morning mist.

I expect a few people might be wondering what camera or lens I used: a cheap Kodak EasyShare CX6200 (35 mm focal length equivalent, 2 megapixels). Even by the standards of a decade ago, this was a low-end instrument … but capable of capturing a scene nicely. If I were shooting this scene today, with my current equipment, I would be able to retain detail in the highlights (near and at the top of the frame) rather than having the image blow out, but I’d like to think that the feeling of the scene is still conveyed, despite the technical limitations.