Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Posts tagged field
Landscape Photography Competitions, who needs them
Mar 3rd
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.
Depth of Field
Jan 14th
Another no photo post today I’m afraid, I’ve now forgotten what the sun looks like! I was out doing a bit of remote shooting with the pocket wizards today, I use the PW’s for off camera flash but I’ve recently got a cord that connects the wizards to the shutter release so I can fire the camera from a mile away. Unfortunately my tests yielded some of the worst photos I have ever taken so I won’t be posting any but I’ve ironed out the kinks and should have some up soon.
I did have to use web resource that I haven’t been on for a while as I was trying to do some Depth of field calculations. Depth of field is a term used when talking about how much of a photo is in focus and is not an easy concept to begin with but it soon becomes second nature. Portraits are a good example of photos that have a very low depth of field, they (usually) have a nice background blur with just the subjects face, or more specifically eyes, in focus, this draws in the viewers attention. Landscapes on the other hand usually have a large depth of field so everything is in focus from the foreground to the back ground. There are many factors that you can change to alter the depth of field, the main ones being:
Lens aperture – Lower the f number the smaller the DOF, so f/2.8 has a much shallower DOF than f/16)
Focal length – Wider focal lengths have higher DOF, so 24mm has a larger DOF than 200mm)
Subject distance – As the subject gets closer (or the working distance decreases) the DOF becomes less
Sensor size also plays a part with larger full frame sensors having less DOF than smaller crop sensors but this is not a variable that can easily be changed.
Anyway the simulator I was using, which explains things visually better than I have above is Here. With this DOF simulator you can see the current depth of field and how changing things like aperture and focal length can effect things, this is very useful if you need to know how wide your DOF will be if you have settings X,Y and Z. The site it is on, Liquid Sculpture, is also a great site with some fantastic water drop shots, well worth checking out.
Landscapes out at Nostell
Nov 9th
Trees in a Field at sunset near Nostell, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Tree in a Field at sunset near Nostell, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
I sometimes use Flickr maps for a bit of inspiration as to where to go if I’m a bit undecided and it looked like we may have a decent sunset so today it sent me to Ackworth which is near Nostell Priory just outside Wakefield. I could see (from google maps) there was a good size field with a few lone trees so off I went. The sunset wasn’t the best in the end, a thick layer of cloud just above the horizon stopped it really lighting up the clouds but as the saying goes, you’ve got to be in it to win it! Got a couple worth posting, both taken at f/16 and ISO100 around 25mm and 1/10 sec. I had the circular polariser on along with my Lee ND grad.
Fine Art Trees…In Lepton
Oct 8th
Lepton Skies
It was a pretty clear this evening so I got out to snap some trees, there were a few whispy clouds to make the sky interesting which was a bonus. This clump of trees are in a small town called Lepton, between Huddersfield and Wakefield and they kind of remind me of the trees on the Maasai Mara, only in Yorkshire. In the black and white photo I was going for a fine art type shot purely because I thought the subject lends itself to that style. Taken at ISO100, 33mm, f/16, 1/8.
In the colour image I used a telephoto as I wanted to include Castle Hill in the background this wouldn’t have worked with a wide angle as the distant castle would be far too small. It’s been a while since I visited the land of the silhouettes but quite liked it as I could didn’t need to worry about graduated filters or anything, handy as I was just packing up! It was taken at ISO100, 70mm, f/16, 1/100. I’ve edited this post and put up a colour panoramic instead, thought it looked a bit better.
Sunset over Castle Hill
Back in the Field
May 7th
The sky was looking very interesting tonight, it was a shame I didn’t really have a fixed idea where I wanted to be as I think I could have done a little better. As it was I ended up in a field after vaulting numerous walls desperately searching for foreground interest other than grass, I failed. I tried the 10 stop ND filter to really blur the grass but didn’t like the results, I kept seeing a windows wallpaper type landscape but with really mean looking clouds! I drove round a bit more to see if I could get anything but no joy, it’s really infuriating when the sky is so dramatic and you can’t find a half decent location! Anyway this one was taken at my stock landscape settings, 16mm, f/16, 1/30 ISO100, with a 3 stop graduated filter. It was good to be out doing a bit of landscape photography again though and I got back before the rain, which was good!