Striding Edge, Lake District

Another one from Saturday. This was a quick and dirty panoramic (non of that tripod nonsense) Camera on full manual with focus set to infinity and about 5 shots taken in portrait orientation with about 33% overlap from one photo to the next. Photomerge in CS4 is so good now it can get rid of any vignetting you might have or any geometric distortions that come with using wide angles. I wanted to use striding edge as a leading line up to the mountain but also wanted to include the tarn to the right. These were all taken at ISO200, 16mm, f/13, 1/125.

Helvellyn and Ullswater

Took a quick trip up to the lakes at the weekend as it seemed the weather was going to be good, unfortunately it was a little hazy so didn't get the camera out too often but these were a couple that seemed worth posting. I'll have to get there for sun rise one of these days. I didn't have my tripod so it was a hand holding compromise again between ISO, aperture and shutter speed, not too difficult in full manual, I even put the grad on on the lake shot as I new the clouds would be an important element.

The boathouse on Ullswater is very picturesque and there is usually at least one tog there trying to get something. Striding edge is a great part of the walk up Helvellyn, it was a shame the clouds were a little low but again, you really need to be there for the golden hours to get anything memorable.

I'm getting some mileage from these...

I think this will be the last from this set and I'm only posting now instead of tomorrow as I might be busy then and I'm not now. The first jetty was the one I wanted to get but I arrived and it wasn't in the best state of repair, good job I didn't plan to get the boat there! I was after some long exposure shots so out came the 6 stop ND filter which got me to 25 seconds at f/16 (ISO100). I used a cooler white balance to give the colder tone, you can either do this in camera or, if shooting RAW, in processing.

The second shot was on the way up Catbells, using some frozen vegetation as FG interest and a 3 stop ND grad to keep the sky under control. This was taken at f/16 ISO 100, 1/10 sec at 16mm.

Panoramics of the Lake District

A couple more from the same walk as the previous post. These were two panoramic shots of the valleys either side of Catbells, the first one shows Derwent water, Skiddaw, Blencathra and Keswick.

I'm not 100% sure of the name of the name of the other valley but apparently it has a town called littletown that is in some of the Beatrix Potter books. It was in shadow for most of the day so remained frosty, the sun lit up the mountains behind it though. In this shot you can also see Grasmoor and Grisedale Pike (I think).I may have posted Instructions for creating Panoramics a while ago, with photoshop's photomerge script they are really quick and easy. I would always use a tripod just to save any trouble when editing, if you get a bit of a slope your panoramic can quickly become very thin!

Cat bells and Derwent Water

We were in the lake district for New Years day and decided to beat the crowds and climb cat bells early on. The weather was great with no clouds and no wind so when the sun came up and lit up the Derwent valley it was difficult to take a bad shot.

We were taking pictures all the way up and concentrating on using the sun to side light the hill. There was a lot of frost about so frozen rocks and vegetation was good for foreground interest. I had a 3 stop graduated filter on because I didn't want to blow out the sun and the sky, this often gives a star burst effect which I quite like but you sometimes get a bit of flare somewhere else in the shot (usually right on the focal point) but this is easily correctable in photoshop, try to keep your lenses and additional filters free from any dust of finger prints to minimise this.
Again it's often easier to go on full manual and dial in your aperture and then play around with your shutter speed to get the exposure you want, it's not always best to let the camera decide, especially if you have a lot of contrast in the scene. The first shot was taken at ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/5 sec.
The shot from the jetty was taken later on when the sun was well up, however as it is winter you get a nice low sun for a lot of the day. This was a 10 second exposure to really take any movement out of the water in the lake. I also set the aperture to f/22 and the ISO to 50. On my canon you have to set expanded ISO to on in your custom settings. To slow things down further I slapped on a 6 stop ND filter (basically thick sunglasses for your lens) this allowed me to get the exposure time to 10 seconds.

Last of the Mud Flats

These were from the maybe pile from last week that I decided to tinker with and was quite happy with the results. The light was going quite quickly in these shots so there has been a decent amount of recovery both in lightroom and in photoshop. Lightrooms gradient tool and local adjustment brush are awesome, I highly recommend it if you shoot a lot of RAW's.

These were taken at similar settings, 16mm, f/16, ISO100 and around 2 seconds exposure. Again I warmed the tones up by adjusting the WB in lightroom, I wasn't after a high contrast HDR look but I did bring back some detail with the local adjustment brush on the rocks and the gradient on the sky.

Highland Cattle

I got this one a few days ago at the end of a bit of a photo walk, We came across a field of highland cattle who must be fairly used to visitors. I managed to get closer and closer until after about 10 minutes this one came over to check out what was going on. This was taken about 0.5 a second before he licked the front of the lens. I wanted to get really wide so I was at 16mm at f/5.6 and 1/250 to ensure there was no motion, I still had a circular polariser and an ND grad on the lens, as I'd been shooting landscapes so I had to pump up the ISO to 400, the colour version has quite vivid blues from the sky and oranges from the cattle but I like the mono version as it accentuates the low sun side lighting we were getting, especially on his nose!

Seascape at Sunset

Another one from our trip to the lakes, this was overlooking the Morecambe Bay area during the last few minutes of sunlight, the tide was very far out leaving large bodies of water between the sand (or mud) banks, as there are no waves the water is very still and ideal for reflections, I was a little annoyed at the ripple saw after we got back but there you go. The original was quite a cool tone so I warmed up the white balance in Lightroom, one of the enormous benefits of shooting in RAW. This was shot with my 3 stop ND grad at ISO100, 17mm, f/16 at 1/2 second.

Boat at Low Tide

I've just come back from a few days in the Lake District and have started processing some shots. This one was one of my favorites. I used a very low angle to really include pebbles and hyper focal distancing to ensure all but the very closest stones were in focus. I have a colour version which I really like but I've decided to post this mono version. I'll hopefully put a few more up this weekend. As I didn't have my tripod I had to make sure any exposure had to be over say 1/100 as I was lying on the pebbles I wasn't confident to go any slower and keep the camera steady. I had a 3 stop ND filter attached to keep the sky from going places it shouldn't! This was taken at 16mm at ISO200, 1/160 at f/9.

Buttermere

Hi guys, just thought I'd pop this one up. It was taken about a month ago whilst I was up in the lake district. I have processed it with dynamic photo and quickly cleared up a few dust spots with CS3. It is a really nice walk up haystacks from Buttermere and you can take in a few other peaks before coming back down which is good, on a clear day there are plenty of views but good luck getting a clear day up there! We had a nice morning and then the clouds rolled in. Theres nothing too remarkable about this one, more of a memory shot really, I would have liked to have a bit of foreground interest and possibly made more of the path but I was there primarily for the walk. The info on this one is f/16, ISO100, 16mm 1/40sec. I also used a 0.9 Lee ND grad for the sky.

Icy Puddle

Two post in two days, I do have these fits and starts when it comes to posting photos. This was another from our ascent up to high street in the eastern fells of the lake district. This was looking back at the crag featured in the previous photo, I think this is called eagle crag (but could be wrong) apparently the last surviving golden eagle in England resides around here, very sad indeed. Anyway I've burnt the clouds a little to add a bit of drama and dodged the snow to make it slightly whiter. In retrospect I think it might be a bit too central but if I crop it I get rid of the dark cloud to the top left of the shot and I really wanted to keep him in.

On a completely unrelated point, I downloaded some free lightroom presets for any lightroom users, it is from a site called protography.com the link for the presets is here. They are pretty good if you need a bit of direction on how to process your shots.

My Buddy, The Medic

I haven't posted for ages and I thought I'd get back with a HDR shot taken of my friend who went with me up high street in the lake district today. I was explaining how it is possible to process a RAW file for HDR but you are better using a bracketed exposure, obviously this isn't possibly for moving subjects. You used to have to process the raw file 3 times and blend them together in photoshop but it really is much easier to use a dedicated HDR program such as photomatix or the one used for this photo, dynamic photo hdr. The clouds were fairly thick but still had a bit of texture too them so I under exposed by 2/3 so I didn't blow them out. There are plenty of sliders to play with in dynamic photo it just depends how much you want to cook your image. The painterly effect (if thats the right word) is a new feature in the latest version, it's called match colour, then you chose which sort of colour set you want, I recommend you give it a try. The exif for this one was ISO200, 16mm, f8, 1/320.

Old HDR Photos

These are some landscape photos from last summer (what there was of it) that I bracketed the exposure on with a view to do some high dynamic range photos (HDR). A good tutorial for this kind of thing can be found here, for some reason I never processed these, probably because they didn't make the cut when picking my 'picks' I quite like having a bunch of bracketed photos, usually 2 stops either side of normal exposure as it is often easier than messing with graduated filters. Location wise, one taken in the lake district on a decidedly dodgy route up to pinnacle ridge and the other is at the bottom of my road. Anyway I'm not going to go into how they were captured because the new series of lost starts soon!

Blea Tarn

It's been a while since my last post, the weather hasn't been the best for landscapes recently and this weekend was no exception. I went to the lake district to try and get some pictures of the Langdales and the surrounding area but there wasn't much break in the cloud cover so everything was a little flat. I did go to a nice owl sanctuary at Muncaster Castle and the ride over Wrynose and Hardnott passes heading towards Wast water is not to be missed. There are plenty of locations just a few minutes walk from the road in the central lakes, this is Blea Tarn with great langdale in the distance. I was doing quite a few long exposures with a 3 stop ND filter to get the water to have that milky look. This was taken at f/16 for 30 seconds, 28mm at ISO100.