Four Trees

I was struggling for a decent composition this evening, probably because I spent most of it chatting to a fellow photographer when I should have been scouting out locations! Anyway I usually do lone trees but there wasn't really enough space between these to isolate one tree so I got a bunch of them against a fairly impressive sunset.

Lens flare was a bit of a problem as it always is when the sun is in shot but I got rid of most of it in post, I should have really removed the polariser as it was doing nothing facing the sun, it'd have been one less dirt and dust catching barrier between the scene and the sensor! I used a soft Lee 3 stop grad as the sky was a crucial part but I didn't want the land completely silhouetted. The exif stuff is ISO100, f/16 for 1/3 sec at 16mm although I am going to make a conscious effort to use a slightly narrower focal length in future, say 24ish mm, it's tough when I like to include so much sky!

2 Minutes of Sky

Last post 24th March! If I knew what the date was I'd be shocked, I know we're close to some religous shebang that has something to do with chocolate and bank holidays. Anyway I went out the other night as the light was looking pretty good so I arrived and set up and the light went straight to hell so I thought I'd do a few more long exposures. I did a few at 10 minutes but didn't like the results, this one was exposed for 120 seconds, f/16, ISO100 16mm, and if these setting seem familiar it's because I was taking photos of a tree and they are the only settings I allow for tree photos :) Not much else about it really, the 10 stop gives off a little magenta hue for long exposures but if you shoot RAW you can have a little diddle with the white balance when you get home. I quite like how the outer leaves were blurred but the stable branches stayed sharp, gives it a etheral quality. Have a good weekend everyone.

Trees and Masts

I had a feeling we'd get a decent sunset this evening but I couldn't have been more wrong, a mite disappointing to say the least!
It was pretty windy up near Emley Moor Mast so I took the opportunity to get my 10 stop filter out and see if I could get a bit of cloud movement, notice the complete lack of interesting sunset in the background, that's breaking the rules for ya! The mast one was taken at f/5.6 ISO100 19mm 30 seconds.
The tree was taken about an hour earlier, I was using the fence as a leading line and side lighting from the low sun. You wouldn't believe it if I told you but when I was approaching there was a big mean looking cloud behind the tree that would have made a decent shot but alas it vanished and left me with a fairly plain blue sky.
The important lesson is not every outing is successful and this is why it's so rewarding to eventually 'get' a shot, I'm told golf is similar but I don't believe it for a second.

Long lense if you don't feel like walking

I got this a few mornings ago and pretty much forgot about it until today. I wasn't dressed to brave the snow and I didn't really have time to get to a location so I got another view of my favorite tree! I had the 100-400 lense on, I think this one was about 230mm, I got a few with the tree isolated but wanted more of the great sunrise so I pulled back a little and used the tree and horizon to just set the sky. I didn't use any filters.
It was a bit tricky setting the white balance in the end I set it on the cooler side, about 4000K but desaturated the blues slightly. I added a bit of a vignette in photoshop and that's about it, there might be a few dust spots as I don't think I took care of them at the start.

Snow... with trees

It's been far too long since I've posted anything on here so I'm putting up a couple from today's outing. I'd seen this tree a while back and wanted to get some shots of it and with the recent snow it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out. I waited until the sun was quite low in the sky and did some side lit shots but these weren't really that great so I went a backlit shot. I wanted the light to really show the texture of the snow (hence the side lighting) but still have a focal point.

I wasn't out for very long and I certainly wasn't lying down for very long. I kept the sky under control with my Lee Grads and tweaked the levels in Lightroom. In hindsight I should have done a killer HDR with about 9 exposures but my mind must have been elsewhere. These two were taken at (about) 16mm f/16 1/60 at ISO200, I went to ISO200 as I took the camera of the tripod to get (frostbite) really low, I was at about 1/30 before and I didn't want to handhold at that speed. Thanks for looking.

You guessed it, a tree...at sunrise!

Hey folks, I wasn't in the best frame of mind for photos this morning so it became more like a what not to do on a photo outing and if you can still come away with something half way decent you are doing ok. (Remember, it's what not to do, and I did them all!)

1. Set off with no plan of what you intend to shoot.
2. Take the bare minimum in terms of equipment, filters and polarisers just take up space and you won't need them.
3. Leave yourself no time to get to where you wish to take photos.
4. Walk the least distance possible but through bogs that only 50,000 horse power tractors can get through, if possible wear brand new Italian motorcycle boots, oh and clean jeans!
5. Don't worry about checking what ISO you were using last time, it'll probably be a nice noise free 100 anyway.
6. Take a haphazard, almost child like approach to crossing muddy puddles, with equipment depreciation these days you can always just get a brand new camera should it come off the tripod as you skip over the half lit puddles.
7. Spend no time thinking about composition, you'll just over complicate things, is a straight horizon really that important?

This is the result, I'm amazed I managed to remember to take the lens cap off! I got away with being a little lax this time because I was familiar with the surroundings and the equipment. The timing of the shot is critical, shots 10 minutes either side of this one would be moved to deleted pretty much as soon as I got them on the computer. For anyone still following this was a HDR so the shutter varied from 5 secs to about 1/25. ISO was 100 (I do check this without thinking now, despite the above point 5) Keeping ISO's low is extra important when doing HDR stuff, f/16 and 16mm.

I'm adding another shot to this post as I think I prefer it to the HDR look, I'll probably change my mind back as soon as I post it!

Yorkshire Dales

Just got back from a few days in the Dales and the Lakes, not the greatest of conditions for landscape photos unfortunately, We did a nice walk around Buttermere taking in a few peaks. It was blowing a hurricane on the top of high stile so our descent was a bit hair raising. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm just bad at assessing risk, ironic considering I used to be a risk assessment consultant. Anyway, I got this one just north of Ingleton during a break in the clouds, I kept the sky under control with a neutral density graduated filter. The exif data was ISO100, 17mm 1/15 at f/16. Ingleborough is in the distance. The raw file was processed in Lightroom, adding a little clarity and a slight tone curve to increase the highlights. I burnt the clouds in CS3 and added a tinted BW adjustment layer.

Another Day, Another Silhouette

In an attempt to get another picture on the news I went and got this one this morning as I could see it was going to be a belting sunrise. This was taken in a field behind our house. I would have liked to get closer to the tree but the field was contained a few large bulls so I just put on a long lens. This was taken at f16 1/6 sec at 149mm, not a typical landscape focal length it has to be said. I also dialled in -0.3 exposure compensation to keep the land black.

A split toning RAW conversion

I seem to be putting a lot of tree shots up at the moment, no real reason other than they are a subject I enjoy shooting so here's another. The sunset was great last night but my location selection wasn't the best but as it was getting a bit late I didn't want to move. You really don't want to be driving along looking for locations whilst the sun is setting, especially on windy country roads hunched over the wheel, marvelling at the sunset, very dangerous. I wasn't overly happy with the shots I got so I really experimented with my RAW conversion until I found an effect I quite liked. If you do shoot in RAW I would recommend getting adobe lightroom (here). It's just full of options for getting the most out of your photos and there are loads of tutorials on the web about the program, such as lightroomkillertips.com. Anyway the main effect I used here is called split toning, this is where you can pick the colour and saturation for the highlights and the shadows independently, I pretty much used yellow for both but you can use complimentary colours. It can be a bit hit and miss but that's the beauty of shooting digitally.
The info on this shot is as follows: f16 (to maximise DOF) for 1/2 second (so using a tripod) at about 34mm (shot in aperture priority). I did shoot with an exposure compensation of -2 this means the shot was underexposed (for the sky), I was originally going to merge 2 shots, one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the land but in the end I left the land as a silhouette because I liked the impact of the sky. Hopefully going to get some shots in the peak district tomorrow, where my foreground interest will be rocks instead of trees!