Pete Barnes - Wakefield Wedding Photographer » Landscape Photography

Landscape Photography Walk Over, Back to Work

Pete Barnes — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:27:42 +0000

Well we are back from our walk from the Atlantic to The Med over the Pyrenees. In all it took about 45 days walking and about 4 days resting, there were plenty of ups and downs in more ways than one. To say we under estimated it would be an understatement but I managed to get the camera out once or twice for the Landscape Photography. To be honest we were so exhausted at the end of each day, we were in bed before sunset and when we were up before sunrise we usually had to cover the ground before the sun started cooking us. As it rained solidly for the first 2 weeks the camera stayed in the waterproof bag!
Anyway I’ll hopefully set up a more dedicated area for the photos, some are on my flickr stream but I thought I’d post one of my favorites of the trip. This was right at the very end of the trek at Banyuls sur Mer. I had got up early and hobbled down to the sea. Luckily I was rewarded by a great sunrise just as the bakeries were firing up!

GR10 Trail - A Long distance hike over 900kms over the Pyrenees from the atlantic to the mediterranean

We have raised quite a bit for Cancer Research but donations are always welcome, our just giving site is here if you would like to donate. All in all it was a great experience which I would recommend to anyone, I think if we tried anything like it again we would probably take a little less stuff! Anyway back to the wedding and portrait photography, which we love, if we could just find the couple who are getting married on top of a mountain!

Dunstanburgh Castle Landscape Photography

Pete Barnes — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:03:26 +0000

Dunstanburgh castle in Northumberland

I was up at Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumbria on a bit of a motorbike/photography trip with a friend recently when I got this photo. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a sunset and there was even less of a sunrise but we did the best with the light we had. Dunstanburgh castle is a very photogenic location, with waves rolling in over the large round boulders as foreground interest and the ruined castle on the hill top it gives the landscape photographer numerous opportunities to create a great image. A great sky would really set the image off but as the clouds weren’t really dancing I made sure the sky wasn’t really the focal point, one of the ways this was done was by positioning the horizon on the top third as opposed to the bottom. I wanted the motion of the waves to appear misty, this was done by having the camera on bulb mode and keeping the shutter open for 90 seconds (a very opaque neutral density filter such as a 10-stop is pretty essential for long exposures).

Dunstanburgh castle in Northumberland (Colour Version)

Composition was a little tricky on the beach but I knew I didn’t want a single rock dominating the middle of the foreground so tried to make sure the rocks were fairly evenly scattered. I also had to wait for a bunch of pretty large waves as it is the white choppy water that gives the mist effect on long exposures, gentle waves wouldn’t have worked. It’s worth noting that the tripod was in about a foot of water here (as was I occasionally) and any wave splashes or rain on the filters had to be cleaned straight off, a tedious task to say the least. I used a 10 stop ND filter and a 3 stop grad to retail detail in the sky, as I wanted the cloud movement as well.

Dunstanburgh Castle with a Pink Sky

Processing was done in lightroom and the black and white conversion was done using nik software’s silver efex pro. The shot was taken at f/8, 16mm, ISO250 for 90 seconds. I’ve added a couple of colour versions of Dunstanburgh Castle as well, sometimes it’s difficult to choose!

Lake in Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Pete Barnes — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:27:31 +0000

Not really a lake as such, those thinking it is Buttermere in the middle of West Yorkshire may be disappointed, but it’s still quite nice to stroll around. Anyway Pugney’s sailing club in Wakefield is usually where I go if I need a reflected sky shot and as it’s only a few miles from where I live I can get there quickly if the sky looks interesting. There are actually quite a few swans there as well so it has a lot of potential, photographically. When I was setting this shot up a lone swan came close to the rock in the shot (about 3 feet away) but my shutter speed at the time was too slow to freeze the movement but if I’d have been a bit quicker it would have been award winning, it’s I’d have been even quicker I’d have used my new gold reflector, that was quite close by, to light the swan up. In fact I’m going to go back and try for that exact shot very soon.

Landscape Photography of A Lake in Wakefield, West Yorkshire at Sunset

Anyway back to the (swan-less) image. Shots like this always work well low to the water so you generally get a bit wet, your tripod and camera strap usually get dunked too but as long as you can keep the camera safe no harm is done. This one needed a little foreground inerest, the previously mentioned swan would have been great but a rock would suffice. This was taken at 20mm, f/8, ISO500 for 30 Seconds. Yes it was a long exposure, I have ordered a more accurately colour balanced 10 stop filter from Lee which I will hopefully soon have but the HiTech version worked fine, once the magenta was removed in lightroom. There is a little lens flare coming from the centre of the image but I quite liked it in this version so I kept it in. The sky in the end didn’t go as red and impressive as I’d planned and the swan didn’t stick around but next time maybe…

… I added the version with a few swans, not the best but worth posting.

Landscape Photography of A Lake in Wakefield, West Yorkshire at Sunset

Lighthouse on Anglesey, North Wales

Pete Barnes — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:58:28 +0000

Path to the Lighthouse

I haven’t posted any landscape photography in ages so it was good to get out and do some. I was over in Wales on Monday doing a bit of training for our up and coming trip over the Pyrenees (http://www.iwouldwalk500miles.co.uk/) and got these two shots on Llanddwyn Island of what looks to be a converted lighthouse. The island itself has loads of great photographic subjects, I could have spent a lot longer taking photos (and I was there for 4 hours) but I decided to concentrate on the lighthouse and the path leading up to it. It was a nice clear sunset, not a great deal going on in the sky as there were no clouds and my ideas of the volcanic ash making for brilliant sunsets has yet to materialise so I concentrated on the land.

Lighthouse on Anglesey taken on Llanddwyn Island

The mountains you can just start to see behind are in Snowdonia. We did go to climb one of them the following day but after a pretty cold night in the tent followed by what can only be described as an unprovoked attack on my wallet by the generous souls at a certain breakdown company, we decided to come back. It was a very enjoyable few days and if you are over that way I would recommend popping down to Llanddwyn Island for a look round and maybe the odd photo.

Yorkshire Dales Three Peaks Walk Photography

Pete Barnes — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:11:56 +0000

We did the three peaks walk in the Yorkshire dales at the weekend, which is a 26 mile all day walking affair over 3 of the peaks in the dales, (Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough) and had some of the best landscapes Yorkshire has to offer. I had seen a similar photography idea that I wanted to try during the walk, it basically involved taking a photo every minute or so for about 12 hours, it got quite tedious after about 15 minutes, especially going up the hills and finding 3 feet of frozen snow on the tops but it was worth it in the end and the weather was pretty stunning too.

I also managed to get a couple of usable landscape photographs at some points that I have used at the start of the video to set the scene, I’ll put these up in a post soon.

There was a bit of a break in the photography during the ascent of the third peak due to it being covered in a frozen snow, a guy we met earlier had been up it with a friend the day before and he had fallen 40 feet, we heard of this guy again as he had been in the pub at the bottom so I don’t think he was too badly injured. A few people had turned back saying you needed ice axes and crampons to get up it so we thought it best to maybe put the cameras away for 10 minutes.

The walk usually takes 10-12 hours but we had to take a little longer due to the photography and the conditions so it became too dark for photos at about 2 miles from the end. Unfortunately we then lost the path (as it was pitch black) and ended up at an abandoned farm which was pretty scary but managed to get back ok. I always feel these are the experiences you remember best on days out like this and all in all we had a great day, bit sore the morning after mind!

Landscape Photography Competitions, who needs them

Pete Barnes — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:18:22 +0000

Sunrise through the Branches

Hi folks, one of my traditional landscape photography from the Wakefield region posts today. I’m having to post a couple of my B-sides from earlier this year when we had all the snow. I found it during after a bit of an unforced photo library reorganisation, the less said about that the better! It wasn’t my favorite shot of the morning but I thought I’d put it up, if anything to remind people what a sunrise looks like as it seems so long since we’ve seen a decent one (although it was a nice day yesterday). The details were ISO100, f/16, 1/8 at 32mm and if I recall correctly I’ll have had my Neutral density grad on. Even though I have used a silhouetted tree and branch to frame the sky I still wanted the snowy field behind to be visible, so I still used a grad, otherwise everything but the sky would be black. I polished it up a little in lightroom as I tend to do with shots with all my landscape photography with quite a high dynamic range.

Why the unrelated title you say? Well I’m getting to that. About the same time this was taken I thought I’d put a few of my images in for a Landscape photography, not something I normally do, probably due in part to a spirit crushingly high fear of failure, but as I suspect I was probably buoyed up by the Christmas period and thought why not? Needless to say I didn’t win, hence the lack of “Yay I won a landscape photography competition” posts recently. At this point I would like to point out that this may come across as a bit of a bitter sounding, sore loser type rant, which could well be partly true, but only very slightly. It really isn’t meant to come across like that.

Anyway I was looking at this one remembering how cold it was and how early I’d got up and trudged to this location, told you it might sound bitter. I then took a look at some of the photos shortlisted for this competition, I’m not going to say which competition it was or post any other photographers shots as they aren’t here to defend their work. One of the judges was one of my favorite landscape photographers (hence the reason for entering) and I thought, they’ll know a good landscape photo when they see it.

A Cold Morning

Imagine my surprise when I see 2 of the 4 shortlisted landscapes were indoor! I think one may have been a photo of a skirting board another favorite being a half submerged car taken pretty much on the stroke of midday, golden hours or what! So I thought what is the point of waiting for the ideal conditions, getting up at some stupid time to go out and really use the light to compose a shot with some emotion, when you can just snap an abandoned shopping trolley in a canal, maybe even stay in bed and create a landscape photo from there! A few days later I read an article about how people really are taking mediocre shots and calling them art, and whats worse is half the judges agree with them!

The point is, to answer my question, the early mornings and the bad conditions and the trudging around in a field are what make the photo worth while when you get one, and it really is great when everything seems to fall into place and you come away with a great photo. If anything getting nothing a few times makes it even sweeter when you come away with something half decent. At the very least you’ve got out and exercised your mind and body, beats Eastenders! And if some judge doesn’t agree and thinks a bloke sunbathing constitutes a landscape photo that’s their opinion, so what, least my nan likes them!

Inspiration

Pete Barnes — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:03:40 +0000

No photos to post today so I feel a bit stingy but the weather has been pretty shocking of late, we were a bit spoilt with all the snow and clear blue skies last week! So I thought I’d write a little bit about some of the sources I use for inspiration when I can’t get out to take photos for whatever reason.

Talk Photography – This is a forum I’ve used quite a lot in the past not only for inspiration but it’s also great learning resource. It really helps develop a critical eye for both others photos and your own, this becomes very important when you are out composing photos. There is always a little voice saying “what would that lot on TP make of this?” There is an issue of some people being overly critical and believe me, photographers are the most critical when it comes to, well, photographs. You sometimes question their validity to criticise but everyone has an opinion, if you can learn without taking too much to heart you will develop as a photographer.

Stumbleupon – I’ve only got into this recently but it’s great, you basically register and put in your interests (photography) and start stumbling. I’ve got a toolbar on firefox now where I just click and it’ll take me to some obscure site showing great photos, you can even say if you like it or not to get it noticed by others. I’ve found some great photos and resources just by stumbling.

Flickriver – This shows some of the best photos out there on flickr for a particular day, and there are hundreds, daily! It’s across a whole range of subjects so there is plenty of inspiration. Definitely worth a look.

Twitter – Again I’m kind of new to twitter but it’s a great way to meet others with the same interests, there are loads of big photographers who twitter a lot and the info is really good stuff. Other photographers are great for inspiration, just to look at the sort of images they are putting out, how they light and compose images. I always think looking at photos is a great way of learning, you absorb them somehow and they come back to you when you are out with the camera.

Flickr Maps – Flickr is great for photos but there are quite a lot to wade through and some of them have, ahem, limited appeal. The maps tool though is great, especially if you want to get out and don’t have any place in particular to go to. I put the map on an area I’m interested in (usually about a 10 mile radius of my house) then just search for landscapes, if an interesting shot comes up I see where it is on the map and get down there. It’s important not to go and try and replicate a shot but it helps open your eyes to landscapes that could just be on your door step.

It’s not always easy to keep inspired and more often than not you can go out and come back with nothing, but hopefully some of these links will inspire you to go out and get some shots. To quote Ansel Adam:

“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.”

I’ve posted one of his shots below, he knew his way around a camera!

The Tetons and the Snake River

Emley Moor Mast in the Snow

Pete Barnes — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:52:05 +0000

I did a landscape commission a while back where a client wanted a panoramic photo of Emley Moor Mast, it has since become one of my most popular images so I decided to try and get a version of it in the deep winter snow we have had recently. I used my 70-200 lens and zoomed in to 200mm and did a stitch of about 10 vertical photos to get the image you see below.

Panaramic Photo of Emley Moor Mast in the Winter Snow

I did a talk at a photographic club the day after, this being one of the images I showed. The high resolution version really is quite detailed, you can pretty much see the windows of the church near the mast. It was taken about an hour before sunset, I should have really stayed to get a better version with a lower sun but I had to move to a different place and I thought the location isn’t going anywhere and neither is the snow by the looks of it!

A Lamp Post in the Snow

Pete Barnes — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:47:24 +0000

A Lamp Post in the Snow

Out again this evening, sky was nice, although a bit too clear for my tastes but you can’t have everything. I got this wintery lamp post as it reminded me of the one from the lion the witch and the wardrobe. I was reading about Ansel Adams again and so my processing veered towards black and white, if anyone knows how he managed to get shots like his it would be a great help, they didn’t have photoshop in the 30’s either! I loved the texture of the snow on the wall, processing it was a little tricky as I didn’t want the sky too dark as to merge with the top of the lamp post.

I’m also posting the obligatory tree shot, I liked how the shadow acted as a lead into the sun, although I was concious of the fact that I had taken a very similar tree in snow shot last year but I guess no two trees are identical. I couldn’t change a lot compositionally as I became aware that I was on a frozen pond or ditch, I don’t think it was too deep but didn’t want to hang around to find out. Both of these were taken with my 24-70 lens (now I have an adapter ring for it, yay!) at ISO100, f/16 at around 1/15

A Winter Tree

It’s Snowed!

Pete Barnes — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:34:04 +0000

Snow covered tree in a field with a white sky

Hi folks, hope everyone had a great christmas and a happy new year. Not posted for a while but I will hopefully be out and about this week or next as I think we are due a lot of snow, this was a quick snap I got today just on a walk, no setting filters up or anything. The light was about as flat as it can get but for once I wanted a white sky to create almost a black and white scene. It’s important when taking shots in the snow to set your camera to overexpose by at least a stop, otherwise you get grey snow! Anyway I think we are in for 4 more days of this, have to get the sledge out!