As I stood on top of White Horse Hill, at the DMZ in S. Korea, Yeats’ words about the Irish struggle came to my mind. At -20C in mid-winter, there was beauty in the early morning light, but my mind was weighed down by the thought of how many had died on this hill in the war of 70 years ago. As the cranes started to fly in to feed - as they do each day - my thoughts turned to the bitter irony of their flight. The people who live where they fly from can only watch them and dream helplessly of this journey.
Terrible, but, with the beauty, a small ray of hope.
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I’m not very happy with the White-naped Cranes flying into that hill, but it could be seen as part of their future landing area. It was also difficult to show the pinks and blues of the light, but this is what I recall it looked like.
Technical Details
D7100 + Sigma150-500mm @450mm 1/1000 f6.3 ISO 1600
Topaz Denoise and PS Shadows, Highlights and small Color Balance adjustments.
Mike, this is gorgeous!! It’s mind-boggling that such beautiful scenery is the setting for such human misery.
The birds have lovely wing positions and lighting and the BG is drop-dead gorgeous!! I love the hints of mauve against the blues. I think there is a good second version in a more horizontal crop, to fit the motion of the birds, although I’d have to lose the trees in the LL. And I certainly wouldn’t want to crop off the mountain top. (In fact, I’d add just a bit more canvas on top.)
If you want to go with a more “artistic” version (and this is already very artistic) you might play with moving the bottom trees up a bit higher, but you’d need to manufacture more of them on the right.
