Noir Flohay
Last winter, I went out to Belgium for a day to do some landscape photography. Destination: Les Hautes Fagnes in Belgium. I’m still fairly new to the landscape photography game, but I love to learn, and had heard great things about this location.
La Baraque Michel
I parked at a spot that is well known to me; La Baraque Michel. In a distant past, when I was a kid, we used to go wander in ‘Les Hautes Fagnes’, and we used ‘La Baraque Michel’ as a starting- and/or endpoint for our wanderings. I still remember the onion soup with a piece of baguette and cheese on top!
The walk first took me along the edge of a forest, where I was able to take some photos of the forest fire breaks, but also some close-ups of ice and snow on branches.
I love playing with bokeh on these subjects, and sometimes I overdo it. But it’s a creative process.
Les Hautes Fagnes
‘Les Hautes Fagnes’ are a known national park in Belgium, which consists of moorland and forest. Over the moorland, there are wooden walkways you can use to wander the moors. In these weather conditions, that’s a challenge in itself, because the snow and the cold make for slippery, icy wood.
I always like a sense of proportion in my photographs. The human compared to large, human-built structures, for instance. But nothing we can see compares with the vastness of nature. We’re just humans on this floating rock in space. So as I saw this lonesome wanderer in this vast area, I had to take a photo of him!
Noir Flohay
The reason for my visit was ‘Noir Flohay’ a piece of forest that burned down some years ago. The skeletons of the trees are still there, so they make for some desolate photography. You can see these trees on the horizon.
The way up there is quite tricky. There’s no wooden walkway up there, so you have to make your way up through the moor. I can imagine it being even harder in the summertime when the moor is not frozen. I’ve read stories about people sinking into the moor up to the knees, some even to their waists.
I was lucky that the moor was frozen over, so I could make my way up a frozen, very slippery creek. The ice cracked under my feet at times, and it was slippery as hell, but I got there in the end. These are the shots I made of this desolate area.
After I was done, I returned the same way I came. The sun came out which made the snow on the wooden walkways melt a bit, but they also froze again because of the cold and the wind. The way back was even slippier than the way up there!
For a day of landscape photography, I returned with a decent amount of photographs! I like the landscape thing, the peace and quiet in some places. So I think I’m going to try more of this.
