It was barely light when this was taken, and I couldn’t be bothered to set the tripod up, but there was something about the scene and colour that I liked. Fortunately the image stabilizer in the Canon 24-105L was up to the task and this was perfectly sharp hand held at 1/15s.
I know – two consecutive pictures of wood covered in frost – it just happens to be the stuff I am archiving/uploading for stock at the moment :)
Available for licensing on Alamy
A shot from the last significantly cold morning so far this year, in late January. It’s seemed so wet and mild for the past few weeks, which no doubt will please many people as it perhaps signals the approach of spring, but I like cold mornings with comparatively late sunrises.
I usually photograph these trees from the other side of the lake but I was looking for something different this morning – the light hitting the frost on the fence and the shadow covering the path caught my eye.
Available for licensing on Getty Images
Watermead Park, while there were still leaves on the trees. Seems like a long time ago now, but it was taken just a couple of days before the first snows and winter arrived.
As the sun was setting around 4pm and the weather had been reasonably dry I’d been postponing my lunchbreaks and taking them later in the day so that I could cycle around Watermead Park in the hour before sunset. This mix of light stopped me in my tracks and was the first of a number of shots I took this afternoon, before the light faded.
Purchase print at redbubble
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
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 :)
