Two views of Old John, Bradgate Park

landscape 1 Response »
Jun 182010

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.

Old John with rocks in the foreground, Bradgate Park

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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Old John in Winter, Bradgate Park

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 by Andy at 11:52 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Bradgate Park in Winter

landscape, sunrises, trees No Responses »
Feb 022010

Bradgate Park in Winter

A small amount of snow just before Christmas gave me the ideal excuse to get up nice and early on a Sunday morning to go to Bradgate Park. When I arrived, long before sunrise, there were only two sets of prints leading into the park from the Old John car park – someone taking their dog for a walk.

The sunrise itself was rather uneventful – a cloudless sky, a bit of a glow and then the sun appearing – not really my favourite. Perhaps I could have made more out of it if I’d prepared (or had more imagination) but it was pleasant enough just to be there in the fresh snow.

While the light was still good I headed to one of the places I’ve been meaning to visit at daybreak for sometime and got the shot above. This is just as it was taken – no filters, no post processing, just good old fashioned sunlight.

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Posted by Andy at 7:47 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

King Lear's Lake, Watermead Park

landscape 2 Responses »
Jan 102010

King Lear's Lake, Watermead Park

I’ve must admit I’ve been neglecting this blog a little lately – mainly because I’ve been too busy just enjoying taking photographs. On the plus side though, I’ve built up a nice backlog of photos to work through :)

It’s been reasonably snowy here for the past week or so, and having just picked up a second-hand Canon 5D Mk 1 I’ve been making the most of this by getting up early and going to our local park. The image above is of a well photographed landmark in the park showing the final scene from Shakespeare’s play of King Lear. I’ve always put off taking any photos of this, and indeed this is hardly the most adventurous composition but there was something about the light and colour that made me stop here this morning.

The snow lying on the figures had also added extra depth to them, which seems more emphasised by the narrow depth of field.

The vignetting in this shot is caused by using the Canon 50mm 1.8 lens on the full frame 5D camera at a wide aperture setting – it goes away after about f/4. I could have corrected it but I think it adds something to shot.

Technical info : 1/100s, f/2.8, 50 mm, ISO 1600

Posted by Andy at 11:42 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Railway Bridge

people 3 Responses »
Jun 052009

Railway Bridge

This was taken earlier in the year, when the school was closed for a few days due to snow. We all went out to build a snowman and found a small disused bridge over the Great Central Railway that we’d not noticed before. It was covered in graffiti and the colours looked quite striking against the snow, but it wasn’t that interesting on its own so became the backdrop for a rare family photo.

I overexposed this shot (by 1 to 2 stops) for two reasons:-

  • Shots that feature snow generally need to be overexposed anyway, otherwise the snow comes out looking grey rather than white
  • I wanted to lose the snow-laden grey sky which would have made the top half of the shot look muddy

This didn’t work entirely as planned because I did get a small amount of vignetting in the top corners of the shot, but I corrected this by placing the photo on top of a white background layer in GIMP and then erasing the offending bits from the photo to reveal the white background beneath.

Posted by Andy at 1:14 pm Tagged with: , , ,
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