One of the most boring and time consuming tasks that comes with any serious amount of photography seems to be dealing with the large amount of files (and the amount of disc space that they take up). I try to keep two backups of all my images - at the moment I’m finally archiving them all to DVD, chronologically, but I’m also taking the opportunity to get rid of some rubbish and duplicates.
Often I’ll take a couple of shots of something and then notice a distraction in the frame, or I’ll increase the exposure time to get a little more light into a scene. At about 15MB a time all these extra shots add up and despite going against the “never delete your raws” mantra, hanging on to all these extra versions doesn’t really serve any great purpose, other than helping Western Digital stay in business.
The above image is from January 2010 (I’m about 6 months behind with my tidy up at the moment and my progress is constantly hampered by the arrival of new images which I’ll briefly scan for favourites and then ignore for a few months) and was taken on a frosty morning out with John Houghton
This was one of the last shots that I took with my Canon 450D and despite having been back since with my other camera, this was my favourite sunrise shot from this location - mainly due to the good fortune of the cloud picking up the pink glow of the rising sun, which is then also reflected in the ice.
Technical info: ISO100, f/16, 11mm, 1.3s, Cokin ND4 soft grad
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Posted in landscape, sunrises.
Tagged with canon 450d, clouds, cokin, filter, sunrise.
Two views of Old John, in Bradgate Park, taken less than a month apart in December 2009.
There are so many dreadful images of this building, and it is such an uninspired choice of location perhaps because it is so often photographed, but I still see it as a bit of a challenge.
This is my favourite of my shots that feature Old John - I prefer the building to be in the distance, that way its slightly easier to hide how uneven the structure is - even then I have to spend a long time trying to work out if my shot is level.
The heavy cloud cover here (and use of the Cokin ND4 soft grad) allowed me to get a nicely balanced exposure, retaining a lot of the rich late autumn colour.
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No photographers collection should be without at least one picture of Old John in the snow 
This was snapped on the way back to the car after an early morning start. I’d never really noticed this path before, but the light sprinkling of snow picked it out perfectly.
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Posted in landscape.
Tagged with bradgate park, canon 450d, leicestershire, old john, sigma 17-70mm, snow.
Another old one. This time from October 2009, taken with the Canon 450D and the Sigma 18-200 lens.
When I took this I stacked the Cokin ND4 and ND8 grads so that the water in the foreground would be smooth and bright and the light from the setting sun would be correctly exposed. I didn’t really like the result when viewed “in camera” though so I didn’t carry on. On reviewing the images I changed my mind - it might not have been an entirely faithful reproduction but the result was quite striking.
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Posted in filters, sunsets.
Tagged with canon 450d, cokin, cossington, leicestershire, nd4, nd8, sigma 18-200.
“Winter Tree” was my first real attempt at creative processing, rather than just using Photomatix to make a shot look extravagantly real (I was going to put “hyperreal” here but I couldn’t bring myself to do it). The initial version was an accident - one of those rare “I wonder what happens if I…” experiments that gives a pleasing result. Unfortunately though my inexperience at the time though led me to overlooking some serious flaws with the original image - the contrast was all wrong and the image was noisy.
The poor contrast in the original version was due to my monitor being poorly set up - it was far too dark - and whilst the noise level isn’t that obvious in the version elsewhere on this site (http://www.andystafford.co.uk/winter-tree/) it is painfully apparent on the large version available on Flickr (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/3194854394_305882a0a9_o.jpg).
Why was the image noisy? Because my Microsmoothing setting in Photomatix was too low (0). It made the clouds look more dramatic but I didn’t see how badly it was affecting the quality of the image as I neglected to look at it at full size.
If I was ever going to make this image available as a print I knew I was going to have to go back to the original raw files and reprocess it. Details of this process can be found here http://www.andystafford.co.uk/winter-tree-and-photomatix/
A trial version of HDRsoft’s Photomatix is available at http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html. Should you decide to buy a copy of Photomatix, feel free to use my discount code, “AndyStafford15″ which will give you 15% off.
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Posted in hdr, trees.
Tagged with canon 450d, canon ef-s 18-55mm, clouds, coupon, discount, hdr, photomatix, print, tree, winter.
Bradgate Park is a particularly rich environment for a photographer - although obviously for this reason it is also incredibly popular with local photographers.
This shot was taken on an overcast spring afternoon, and whilst I would have liked a nice blue sky with a few clouds in, sometimes a dull sky can look more dramatic. Often when I take a photograph I know exactly how, or if, I’m going to process the shot later - in this instance though I was just out taking a few shots because I had a bit of spare time and was getting some more experience in using the camera manually.
In the end I tried a few different compositions and processed them each differently and this one proved to be my favourite of the lot.
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Posted in landscape, textures, trees.
Tagged with bradgate park, canon 450d, canon ef-s 18-55mm, landscape, old john, painting, print, texture.
Earlier in the year I set myself a challenge in order to improve my photography and broaden my horizons a bit - I’d seen this concept mentioned in some old magazines that were passed on to me. I find it can get terribly difficult to think of things to photograph so I decided to combine two of my favourite past times, cycling and photography.
The idea was that I would attempt to find something to take pictures of each time I went out - it didn’t matter what - just anything that took my fancy.
On this occasion I was taking a short cut across some fields. It was early spring and despite the sunshine the ground was a little too wet for cycling, let alone lying on, so I got pretty soaked getting this shot.
Despite having the features I wanted, the shot didn’t capture my feelings at the time - the warmth of the first sunny day of the year, the freedom of being out doing what I wanted to do. It needed to be more fluffy and dreamlike and fortunately I knew exactly what I was going to do.
A friend on Flickr produces some fine textures for layering and I already had one in mind that would add the tone I was looking for to the picture.
A signed, limited edition 42cm x 42cm print of this image is available at highonlight
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Posted in textures.
Tagged with canon 450d, clouds, cossington, fluffy, grass, print, sigma 17-70mm, sky, spring, texture.
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In a number of previous posts I’ve mentioned just how much difference a few minutes can make to a scene. The above shot was taken on the first day of a recent holiday in Cornwall whilst we waited for our accommodation to become available.
I’ve become more interested in black and white than colour photography just recently and it seemed the perfect style to capture the old harbour. The sunlight was patchy at the time and I got the shot I was looking for, looking out to sea through the railings (see below), however just as I was preparing to move on the sun broke through the clouds and lit the scene perfectly. It was impossible to ignore the combination of colours in front of me so out came the red filter I’d been using and in went the ND grad to improve the sky.
Posted in filters, landscape.
Tagged with blue, canon 450d, clouds, cornwall, harbour, mevagissey, print, rust, sea, sigma 17-70mm, sky.
After six months of having a camera I decided it was about time I went through my previous shots and tidied them up, both in terms of organisation and correcting past mistakes. A couple of people commented on this image recently - I was really happy with it at the time but my preferences and skill have changed somewhat since taking it so it became the first one to have a bit of a facelift.
At the time it was taken I was interested in the effect it was possible to create with running water and Photomatix, and even though the shot was taken during the day I still managed to get managed to get a 2.5s exposure by choosing a shaded location and a small aperture.
The three bracketed shots (at 0.6s, 1/6s and 2.5s) were then combined in Photomatix and the resulting image was desaturated and had some contrast tweaks to enhance the molten glass look.
Posted in b&w, hdr, long exposures.
Tagged with b&w, birstalll, canon 450d, canon ef-s 18-55mm, hdr, leicestershire, photomatix, water, weir.
It seems I’m currently “very into” black and white photography - although to be fair, it’s something that I’ve always liked when other people have done it but never really bothered with it myself.
With the advent of digital photography I think B&W has got a bit of a bad name for itself - tools which can greyscale an image mean that it’s an easy way to attempt to salvage a flawed colour image (not that I don’t convert my own colour images sometimes also). The shot above however was achieved using a Cokin P003 red filter, with the image then being desaturated and the contrast tweaked slightly - which took about 30 seconds at most - the ideal amount of processing time when you’ve got a lot of photos to work through
Why desaturate? Why not just shoot in black and white mode on the camera? Well, if I was shooting in jpeg mode it might be a good idea but as I’m shooting in raw mode, when I get the images into Lightroom they will be red again anyway so there seems little point. It doesn’t really help for reviewing the shots on the camera either as the black and white preview displayed on the camera seem quite different to what I see in Lightroom. Besides, I’ve got used to previewing the red images now - once you’ve learned to trust your manual exposures it’s not that much of a problem.
Using an external filter isn’t without its problems though - the main drawback with the red being that you lose 3 stops worth of light so you end up having to make sacrifices in either ISO, shutter speed or aperture (or a combination of the three). Shooting at ISO100, f/11, 1/250s isn’t going to be an option unless you are taking a picture on the surface of the sun so I usually end up at ISO200, f/8, 1/100s - not ideal, but as an exercise in learning to take control of your camera in its manual mode I can heartily recommend it.
Fortunately many DSLRs now have the ability to simulate the affect of certain colour filters built in to their Monochrome picture options - certainly the Canon range do. These can be used without any loss of light, but only have an effect if shooting in JPG - raw images remain unaffected by them.
Posted in b&w, filters.
Tagged with canon 450d, cokin, cornwall, harbour, lighthouse, mevagissey, sea, sigma 17-70mm, sky.
Two photos today, both from the same location, Curbar Edge Stone Circle in Derbyshire.
I was lying down when I took this, as I often seem to be now when taking photos. I’d never really thought of it before, but since dispensing with the tripod it gives that extra bit of stability and allows you to get shots that look a bit different from everyday snaps.
I had originally intended this shot, along with all the others from that day, to be in black and white and they were all taken with either green or red filters attached, but there was something about the distribution of colour in this one that made me decide to tint it (and the other shot here).
As with Shimmer a green filter and an ND4 grad were used and then a magenta tint was added in post production.
This second shot was taken slightly earlier, whilst I was waiting, and as I’ve mentioned in another post shows how much difference a few minutes can make to a image.
Whilst the grad filter is slightly too low and darkens the top of the frame a little too much the subject lends a wistful air to the shot, which lead me to decrease the saturation. I think this gave a much lighter feel, a child lost in contemplation on a warm sunny afternoon (probably wondering why a grown up is lying on the floor)
Posted in filters, trees.
Tagged with canon 450d, cokin, kood, nd grad, sigma 17-70mm, stone circle, stones, trees.
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