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Another image from a snowy morning walk in Watermead Park in January. There are three things I like about this image - firstly, the pink glow, secondly the overall tones, but most of all I like how much the snow has utterly transformed this little section of river. Normally this is just a tangle of bushes and thorns, and admittedly this is still a messy composition, but the snow hides many of the scenes sins.
For me, setting the correct white balance when taking shots like this is a bit of a nightmare - if not done correctly (or if you leave it up to the camera to decide) you can easily end up with lots of dull or blue snow. This time I used the camera’s Custom White Balance feature, which involved taking a shot that contained just snow, then choosing that image as the one for the camera to base the white balance on.
This is technically incorrect for a couple of reasons:-
- Ideally I should have used a piece of 18% grey card (or so I’ve since read)
- Snow isn’t really white
I found the results to be incredibly accurate initially. However, as I’d set the balance based on an image taken just before dawn my white balance drifted away from reality as the sunlight brought with it a change in colour temperature. This slight drift away from reality is partly responsible for the tones of this shot.
Posted in landscape, sunrises.
Tagged with pink, riverbank, snow, trees, watermead park.
By Andy
February 15, 2010
Despite the media hype about the “big freeze” we had very little snow really in Leicestershire this January - although I tried to make the most of the 3 or 4 decent snowfalls by nipping out early in the morning each time to get a few shots. It was worth it too, not just because I got some good shots, but because I’m a big kid and you can’t beat getting to the snow before everyone else 
Posted in landscape, trees.
Tagged with leicestershire, path, snow, trees.
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This shot is was taken one lunch time in Autumn. I’d gone out a few days earlier in search of rich autumnal colours but I didn’t really see anything that I liked. When I found this scene I was intrigued by the light more than the colours and knew it could look really striking in black and white.
Unfortunately it was windy and the end result had some movement in, so I made a note to come back again when conditions were better.
This retaken effort was processed in exactly the same way as the original but fortunately none of the leaves are blurred
Posted in b&w, trees.
Tagged with b&w, fence, monochrome, path, trees, tunnel.
It’s funny how sometimes the last shot of the day, the one you aren’t really expecting to be that special, turns out to be the favourite. This was taken at the end of brief walk in and around Swithland Woods one lunchtime in February this year. It had snowed a few days before but it was all gone now, leaving water lying in the fields and paths. This still water had been my original reason for going out, but as I had a few minutes to spare and no shots that I really liked I ventured into the woods and noticed how the bare branches of the trees filled the view above me.
After finding a suitable spot and waiting for a plane to pass overhead I took 3 bracketed shots. These were then processed in Photomatix to produce a black and white HDR which I then toned Lightroom.
The title, which is borrowed from a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album, was the first thing I thought of when taking the shot.
Posted in hdr.
Tagged with canopy, duotoned, hdr, leicestershire, photomatix, swithland, trees.
By Andy
September 5, 2009
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It’s amazing how frustrating taking pictures in the mist can be. I took quite a lot the morning I took this before I noticed just how much water was on the lens itself - it was also bitterly cold and the last thing I wanted was to keep taking my gloves off to clean the lens.
I liked the composition of this shot at the time but it sat on my hard drive for quite a while before I worked out what I wanted to do with it. In the end I added a texture to give some extra substance to the mist and did some minor editing between the two trees to increase the light there, as for me this was the focal point of the shot.
Posted in textures, trees.
Tagged with fog, mist, texture, tree, trees, winter.
Another old image that I was never entirely happy with. This was taken on chilly morning excursion out at Beacon Hill with Dan and was one of the few shots I got - the rest being spoilt by the lens misting up all the time.
Whilst I liked the original image at the time I thought the contrast could have been better.
For this newer version I went back to the original shots (3 exposures, each 2 stops apart) and reprocessed them in Photomatix. This resulting image was then desaturated and had contrast adjustments.
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 b&w, hdr, landscape.
Tagged with b&w, barbed wire, beacon hill, frost, hdr, leicestershire, photomatix, trees, winter.
This was the first sunset I ever really paid attention to - and the first one I witnessed with my camera. I hadn’t previously been aware of just how much the light changes before and after the sun goes down and being there was accidental - I had actually gone to take pictures of some boats I had noticed there earlier in the week.
I’d just taken delivery of some new filters - a light blue grad and a light tobacco grad, both Kood - and was keen to try them out. After getting the shots I wanted I started to wander back to the car when I noticed that the sun had finally disappeared from view and there was a slight ripple moving across the otherwise still reservoir.
I used both filters here - the tobacco one at the bottom and the blue one at the top. Technically I should have included some foreground but the colours in this were pleasing enough for me to not mind its exclusion.
Technical details:- 0.125 sec (1/8s), f/8.0, 21 mm
Posted in filters, landscape, sunsets.
Tagged with cropston reservoir, kood, moon, ripple, sigma 17-70mm, sunset, trees.
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.
My discovery of filters and their uses has increased my enjoyment of photography immeasurably. Some ND grads were recommended to me for use on skies as an alternative to using HDR. These filters are grey and have no colour cast (the ND stands for Neutral Density) and they stop a certain amount of light entering the lens - the “grad” bit refers to the fact that they are graduated, so part of the filter is clear and lets all the light pass through, but some of it is dark and lets less light pass through. Basically they allow you to make the sky less bright, which allows more detail to be captured elsewhere in the photo, such as the ground.
The shot above, which was taken in Watermead Park, Birstall, was taken with a combination of Cokin ND4 grad (P121M Grad Neutral Grey Medium) and Kood Green filters. (The Kood filters are much cheaper than the Cokin ones and possibly there is a difference in quality, but as I’m just an amateur and trying these things out for the first time I’m not overly worried at this stage - besides I get 3 Kood filters for the price of the Cokin Light Tobacco filter that I was about to buy for £30)
The green filter is really for use in Black & White photography but I find its effect can be pleasing in colour if a red tint is added in post production to calm the green down a bit. Obviously it’s possible to alter the all the different colour levels in Photoshop to get the same or similar effect, but for some reason I don’t find it as enjoyable. Using them on the camera also seems to help me with ideas - I’m actually looking at contrast and texture more than colour and am divorced from the beauty of the scene.
This was how the image looked when it came from the camera - it’s a bit “green” but it allowed me to see how the final image would work.
The image below shows the importance of waiting at a spot for a few minutes - when I arrived there was a breeze and no pleasant reflection in the water
Posted in filters, trees.
Tagged with canon 450d, cokin, kood, nd grad, reflection, sigma 17-70mm, trees, watermead park.
At the start of year, after a couple of months of not going out on my bike due to cold weather I decided I should start again. Unfortunately though, now that I have a camera I find it hard to actually get any amount of cycling done as I’m constantly stopping to take pictures of things. In this instance I got almost as far as the next village before deciding to get a few shots of this tree.
The tree actually looked like this…
The brown and green at the base of the tree were why I stopped originally - but the image just left me a bit cold, for obvious reasons really as whilst the tree looked interesting there is nothing special about the composition.
So I set to work, trying to make the most of the interesting clouds and the slightly nightmarish tree.
The actual effect was achieved in Photomatix by increasing the highlight saturation and decreasing the shadow saturation. A more detailed description of this process, along with source files to try it yourself 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 clouds, coupon, discount, hdr, leicestershire, photomatix, tree, trees, winter.
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