Tag Archives: print
Two old images today, both of the same subject, taken on the same day.
When I got my first DSLR in late 2008 I didn’t really consider just how much space all these raw files where going to take up, and I certainly didn’t think about organising the files - each outings images just went in a folder and I processed the ones I liked the most. As you can imagine, when you use the camera a lot it doesn’t take that long before this gets messy, so towards the end of 2009 I started having a bit of a tidy up. This also gave me chance to review images that I’d missed first time around - things that I’d overlooked in favour of different compositions.
The day these photos were taken was a bit of a breakthrough day for me - prior to that I’d been trying too hard to become “a photographer”. I was too obsessed with composition and trying to take “great photos” but I hadn’t the learnt the things that I now find more important, the non technical things like enjoying the beauty of your surroundings and trying to capture some of what you feel in the scene.
The photo below was the one I chose from this scene at the time but when going back through the shots I found the one above, with its open space and gentle ripples, which I now like far more. It just goes to show how important it is to review your old shots 
Posted in filters, landscape, water.
Tagged with boat, cropston, leicestershire, print, reservoir, ripple, water.
It was about an hour before sunset when we arrived at this location, and the light had just taken on the golden hue we had hoped for. After a bit of wandering around trying to find somewhere to make the most of the light I settled on a nicely constructed platform that was probably intended for fishing and took a couple of shots of the scene above. It was quite pleasant, but a bit bright and there was no interesting foreground to speak of so, as I had a bit of time before sunset, I thought I’d give the Cokin P151 - Gradual Fog 2 filter a try.
I popped the camera into Live View mode and slid the fog filter into the P-Series holder. The fog filter is graduated - foggy at the top and clear and the bottom, fading gently between the two states - and using Live View enabled me to see accurately where the effect was going to begin. If the effect started too low or too high in the picture it wouldn’t look natural.
This was the shot as it came out of the camera…
I liked the effect but found it a little too bright and unrealistic so I just made some minor curve adjustments to improve the overall balance.
Posted in filters, landscape, sunsets, water.
Tagged with cokin, filter, fog, print, sunset.
With Cropston Reservoir being the location of my first sunset shot, it seems fitting that it was also the first place I sat with my camera and waited for the sun to rise.
I’m not really very good at getting up in the morning, but with the sun rising a little later now (7:22am on the morning this was taken) I figured now was as good a time as any, before Autumn turns into Winter and it becomes too cold to use the camera without gloves.
I took a few shots before this one, with just the ND4 grad on, but the foreground was too dark - I wanted the sunlight to be casting a night glow on the boat. I popped to my bag to get the rest of my filters but unfortunately I’d left my filter wallet open and they were all covered in condensation. I had a frantic couple of minutes trying to get the ND8 grad dry and smear free before the run rose too high in the sky.
Technical info : Sigma 18-200 lens at 21mm, 1/20s, f11.0, ISO100, ND4 and ND8 grads
Posted in sunrises, water.
Tagged with boat, cokin, cokin nd8 grad, cropston, filter, leciestershire, print, reservoir, sunrises, water.
Not the only shot from this location on my blog, but my favourite of the two here (and of the 10 or so I took) - taken just a few minutes after the previous one.
Posted in b&w, landscape.
Tagged with breakwater, cumbria, groyne, nd grad, pebbles, print, sea, st bees.
One of my first experiments with monochrome HDR photography and still one of my favourite images. This shot was taken about 30 minutes to an hour before sunset on a sunny but bitterly cold and windy winter afternoon out with Dan in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire. The angle of the sun lit up the grass, and the shadows added depth in front of the tree - I’ve been back to this location since but I’ve never found the light as favourable.
Three shots were used, each two stops apart (-2EV,0EV,+2EV). Processing was done with HDRSoft’s Photomatix Pro, with the black and white image then being split toned to give it an antique look.
It’s taken me a while to get round to it, but this image is finally available as a print on RedBubble and imagekind
Posted in hdr, trees.
Tagged with antique, bradgate park, engraving, hdr, landscape, leicestershire, painting, photomatix, print, tree, winter.
“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://www.flickr.com/photos/maxakropolis/3194854394/sizes/o/).
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.
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.
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.
Posted in textures.
Tagged with canon 450d, clouds, cossington, fluffy, grass, print, sigma 17-70mm, sky, spring, texture.
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.
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