Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Posts tagged tree
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.
A Lamp Post in the Snow
Jan 6th
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!
Jan 5th
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!
The Yorkshire Dales
Nov 12th
We went up for a drive around the Yorkshire Dales yesterday, had some great weather which was pretty lucky. We got the the Ribblehead viaduct for sunrise, I’ve wanted to do a panoramic of this for sometime but never had any decent light. The were both about 8 shot stiches each at 70mm and joined in PTGui. We then drove to Hawes and down to Kettelwell, taking the tree shot on route. Theres a link to the tree location here.
Ribblehead Viaduct
Ribblehead Viaduct
Tree near a stream in the Yorkshire Dales
I’ve developed a bit of a love hate relationship with my tripod, I have a Manfrotto 190 cxpro3, it’s great being so light but the amount of times I have trapped fingers between the centre column and a closing leg is far more than I’d like to admit, maybe it’s just me. It’s a little annoying I can’t remove the centre column as I like to get quite low, I’ll have to look up some tips on it.
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.
Newmillerdam in Autumn
Oct 20th
Newmillerdam near Wakefield in Autumn with tree leaves starting to turn
The light was looking nice yesterday, which might be the last nice day for a while looking at the reports, so I decided to potter down to Newmillerdam. This is a country park not far from where I live and for some reason I never quite get what I want when I go. I was actually after a sunlight through the trees type shot but the autumn colours on the far bank looked a better bet. The thick ND filter slowed the water down and sent the colours haywire, I didn’t pull the reds back too far as they suited the subject. I struggled a little for foreground interest, I finally decided on the tree roots breaking the surface might act as a leading line toward the building (a boathouse I think, there is a cafe in it actually) and the trees. The exposure was 15 seconds so there was a little movement in the leaves to the bottom right but I thought I could let it go. The rest of the settings were ISO200, 19mm at f/8.
A ride through the Peak District
Oct 5th
I went out with a friend on the bikes today to take some photos, I think he’d been inspired by some of the river shots I did recently and wanted to have a go at them. The day was pretty overcast so we didn’t have hard light coming through the leaves and as it was pretty shaded we had some fairly lengthy shutter speeds to work with to get the movement in the water. I didn’t get much at the river so we drove on.
Tree in the Peak district with rocks in the foreground with the sun hitting them through a break in the cloud
We stopped quickly to get this tree shot as I can’t resist lone trees and the rocks made a good leading line to the subject (spotted by my friend, credit where it’s due). The sky wasn’t up to much and the light was pretty flat so I wanted to try and give the impression of the sun breaking the clouds and hitting the rocks in the foreground. This effect was achieved through an off camera flash with a CTO gel off to the left. A photographer named Joe McNally does this type of shot quite a bit and his books explaining the ins and out of it are great if you are interested, there’s always strobist too which is pretty much the Mecca of off camera flash. The shot here was taken at ISO100, 19mm, f/16 at 1/50, underexposed slightly to emphasise the lit part. I thought it had a bit of a resemblance with one of my first shots I took with my 5D of top withens near Haworth (this one).
Four Trees
Jun 13th
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!