On November 26th, a friend and I decided to scout in the St-Barthelemy region. This little trip was inspired by this image published on my LPM portfolio page.

We were therefore looking for a landscape with a lot of negative space, together with leading lines, the colour contrasts available in the early winter, patterns created by ploughed fields and crop stubble, and isolated elements to serve as main and secondary subjects. These will very soon be hidden by snow. On the 26th, the sky was gorgeous. Over the previous weeks, the province of Quebec had received some limited snowfall, but recent rainfall had melted most of it.

But we found few of these elements in the St-St-Barthelemy region.

The worked and rained-on fields had largely lost these contrasting lines. However, almost 100 kilometres later arriving in the Nicolet – Yamaska region, we were fortunate to spot the little outbuilding facing a sole tree in a huge vacant field bathed in the late afternoon light. I was struck by the colour contrast of the sky and the field. All this will soon disappear under the coming storms.

I parked the car on the side of the road and took my long focal lens. To compose the image, handheld I used a 48 mm focal length (35 mm equivalent). To have a perfect histogram (ETTR), I overexposed by a 1/3 of a stop.

On that day, I drove 315 km and got plenty of lovely images. For me, scouting is an important part of photography.