East Hanningfield

In the previous post I showed some photographs taken on a day trip to Burnham-on-Crouch. On the way there, I took a wrong turning and went through East Hanningfield. With the sunshine and blue sky the farming landscape looked 'a picture'. However the road was quite narrow so I was concentrating on avoiding the oncoming traffic and finding a new route. I could see the photographic potential and decided to return later in the day.

Big mistake! Later in the day was overcast with dull, flat lighting. I did try and take some photographs but found the situation less than inspiring. Below is one of the better images as it came 'out of the camera':



In this second photograph, I have cropped the image to try and improve the composition. In addition I have tried to brighten it up. An improvement but still not good:


This third photograph shows an attempt to improve the colour by adjusting slightly the hue and saturation. What surprised me was that the green winter wheat was in fact quite yellow. In addition, lightening the light brown stubble in the background also lightened some of the sky. I feel this is better, but still not a good image:


As an alternative, I tried converting the image to monochrome (black and white). This first attempt just removes the colour. I found that there was not enough contrast between different elements of the picture:


For the second attempt, I adjusted each of the three colour channels independently to remove the colour (using the Photoshop Elements equivalent of the 'Channel Mixer'). I think this is better, but it still lacks 'punch':


My photography obviously needs more work...

Burnham-on-Crouch

This past week I have been visiting relatives on the east coast of England. There were few occasions where I was able to take photographs, but one day we went to Burnham-on-Crouch. This is a small town on the northern side of the estuary of the river Crouch in Essex (east and slightly north of London).

This town has a marina and a long sea wall properly paved, running parallel to the main street with many pubs and restaurants giving a choice of places to eat.

The conditions were quite fine with a light cloud and patches of blue sky. The sun was a bit hazy, but still bright. Quite a fine day for taking photographs. However, I found that those taken away from the sun lacked that certain sparkle, as the picture below shows:




I found I got the best photographs by taking pictures into the sun (Contre-Jour). I had to experiment with the exposure, but the result was a collection of almost monochrome shots with the boats (yachts? dinghys?) in silhouette, as the second shot shows:



I could not resist this derelict old barn, with the roof slowly collapsing:



This fourth photograph is slightly away from the sun so is not quite so monochromatic as the first picture - there is more colour in it:




I have a lot of catching-up to do, but hope to prepare a selection of photographs for the gallery within the next week or so.

A grab shot at dawn

I was upstairs almost ready to go to work. Looking out of the window, I noticed a deep red colour to the line of sky between the top of the Cambrian Mountains and a layer of cloud.

I knew there would not be enough time to get the tripod out and get outside to take a picture, so rushed downstairs for my camera, and returned with it. It was still quite dark, so I took a chance at a hand held shot. There was enough time for just 4 attempts at a photograph before the effect was lost.

As you can imagine, there was a high risk of movement blur, so I tried resting the camera against the window frame as I took the shot. The resultant shutter speed was about ¼ sec with the aperture wide open at f5.6.

The pictures below are from the best shot.

This first image is the original picture out of the camera, resized to 400 pixels wide for this blog. It shows a little evidence of movement. The red is not as bold as the reality.



The second shot shows the detail at full enlargement to show the amount of blur in the image. Not too bad considering it is handheld at about 1/4 sec



For this final photograph, I have adjusted the lighting to lighten the shadows a little and darken slightly the sky. I have then adjusted the saturation of the red to bring it closer to how I remember the scene. The final adjustment was a little sharpening using unsharp mask.


Still not a brilliant photograph, but worth trying for. Again, this is all part of the learning experience.

(prepared on 18th October, posted on 21st October)

A walk in Ilminster

Now that I have got the carnival pictures published on the website, I can now review some of the other pictures I took that weekend. On the Sunday morning we went for a walk along a disused railway which is now a country path from the edge of town out into the country.

As usual I took my camera, but I was not very inspired - I think it was more me than the scenery. Anyway, landscapes are not my strong point. Below are a few of the pictures I took:

This first one was of a couple of trees in a field. I took several shots from different points along the path, put none of them are particularly good - this is the best of the bunch.


The second one is one of a group of fungi - I think it is a shaggy ink-cap. This one was starting to decay, producing the 'ink'. The sunlight shone a little through the trees to highlight it. I should have knelt down further, and used a tripod...



This third one is one of the original bridges across the railway line taking a track to a farm. I think this is almost a good picture but is not quite there. Perhaps a bit too much of the road.


The final one is a failure. I took several of the undersides of the bridges but none of them worked. The tree branch spoils the shot, which was not good anyway.


Still, I find I learn by taking the pictures and seeing what works and what doesn't.

Ilminster Carnival 2006 - Gallery Complete

I have just finished whittling down the 620 photographs to a more manageable 138!

These are now available in the gallery at:
http://www.pmstudios.co.uk/Miscellaneous/Ilminster%20Carnival%202006/misc.html

Due to the lighting conditions, these are not quite of the quality I would like, but on the other hand, I am quite pleased considering the circumstances: light levels were low, contrast was high, shutter speeds slow, sodium lighting...

I must admit, I was getting frustrated by the 'walkers' beside the floats - I presume this is part of the 'health and safety' culture we live in.

To give a taster, I include 3 below:



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Ilminster Carnival 2006

Last weekend I went to visit some relatives in Ilminster, Somerset in the Southwest of the UK. I was fortunate that I chose the weekend that the Carnival was on, giving me the opportunity to take photographs as the precession went past.

This was probably the most difficult lighting situation I have faced. Much of the photography was by the sodium street lamps although some of the floats had lighting of relatively high intensity. With the camera set to its highest sensitivity of 1600ISO, with the full aperture of f4-f5.6, I was getting exposures of about 1/10 sec. Hence, quite a lot of subject movement in the resultant photographs - the camera was on a tripod

To try and get some good shots, I was firing the shutter quite rapidly - in all, I took over 600 photographs as the procession went past.

I have started publishing some on the website - see http://www.pmstudios.co.uk/Miscellaneous/misc.html, with more to come over the comming week. Below are examples of two of the photographs:

Fungi on a wet and windy day

On Saturday evening, whilst taking the dogs for a walk around the fields, I noticed some fungi in the gloom and resolved to take some pictures the next day.

Sunday came and it was rather wet, windy and dull. By 2pm the weather hadn't improved so I decided to get out there and try and take some pictures in the short spells when it wasn't raining. These spells were made even shorter by the wind blowing quite briskly.

This first picture was taken close to the base of an oak tree which lent some shelter. Even so it was quite dark. This was 0.8sec at f25. The camera was mounted on an 'Ergo Rest' camera support. I have had to lighten the shadows a little.




The second picture was taken about 15 feet from the first, at the edge of the shelter provided by the oak tree. My Uniloc tripod was splayed out in a ditch with the camera jutting forward on the central arm. This was 1sec at f18. Whilst shooting these I had to keep taking the camera off the tripod to put it in the camera bag whilst the next shower came down. I had to keep wiping the drips from the tree off the camera. And if it wasn't raining, it was blowing hard. I was amazed to get a sharp picture under these conditions.




This third picture was at the top of another field and shows one of a group of several fungi. A fairly long exposure of 1/3sec at f18. Again, there was rain and gusty wind - you can see how wet the ground is