Another Frosty Day

Last Sunday (Christmas Eve) was also a brilliant frosty day, without the fog and mist that came up like the previous day. I managed to get out early, before the sun started to melt the ice, to take some photographs around our smallholding.

This first photograph is of a small, solitary tree on the line of an old hedgerow. I have tried to use the fence to draw the eye into the picture. I took several pictures from here, varying the zoom and changing position slightly. This was the best of the lot, although not quite right. Any suggestions as to how it could be improved?



The second photograph is of two hawthorn shrubs in the line of another old hedgerow. This is slightly into the sun as can be seen by the bright sky on the right. I think this works better than the first photograph.


This third picture shows a well-frosted tree at the southern end of the smallholding. The view is slightly up hill.


Although there is room for improvement, I think this is a reasonable set of images. It is the frost that makes them. Taking them on a dull wet day would just have given a set of flat, lifeless images.

Cotton Wool Ice

In the previous post, I discussed the foggy, frosty day. On the walks with my wife around the smallholding we spotted in a hedgerow what looked like a ball of cotton wool - but from its location couldn't be.

When it brightened up a bit, I got my camera with its macro lens and clambered over the fence to investigate further. What I saw was an effect that I had never seen, not heard of, before.

It appeared that there was a small twig, about 1.5cm across (say 1/2 inch or so) that was rotting, so was full of small holes. The wood would have been saturated with water from the heavy rain of the previous weeks. From these holes, it seems that the freezing of the water caused the ice to be extruded as fine filaments due to the expansion that takes place when water freezes to ice.

From the photography perspective, this was quite difficult to photograph as the filaments were shades of white on white. I have had to do some enhancements with Photoshop to bring out the detail.

The first photograph shows the ball of 'cotton wool ice' that first attracted our attention:


This second picture is an extreme close up. It is an attempt to show the filaments being extruded from the wood:

A foggy, frosty morning

This morning was quite unusual: there had been a hard frost but it was quite overcast with heavy cloud. This meant it was very dull for quite a while. At about 10:30 (after we had been into the village for our fruit and vegetables), I went out to take some photographs.

Whilst I was outside, a light fog spread around, but the cloud started to lift. I tried a number of photographs of such things as the grasses and herbs in the field covered in frost. As I was taking pictures, the fog started to lift leaving a light mist and the sky turned to a washed-out blue. The sun started warming the ground.

The effect of the sun was two-fold. The frost started to melt, but it also started to warm the ground causing air currents to move the grasses. As I was trying to take extreme close-ups of the frost on the grass, this put paid to these photographs.

Below is a selection of the photographs that I took:

This first photograph was taken whilst it was still quite dull and the fog, although light, was enough to cause dull flat images. This shows some trees and shrubs in the hedgerow at the lower end of a field.

















This picture was taken less than an hour after the first. You can see the sky is blue, rather than grey and the sun is lighting the scene. Most of the fog has gone but you can still see a light mist in the distance. This shows two beech trees in an old hedge line.

















The third photograph shows frost on some bramble (blackberry) leaves that are just catching the sun shining through the hedges and trees in the background.

















I still have a lot to learn!

Tiny Fungus - Picture of the Week

This week, for my 'Picture of the Week', I chose a photograph of some tiny fungi. They are small - the head is just a few mm across - so small I did not notice them at first. I had been photographing other fungi on a pile of old logs outside but, due to the long exposure time in the poor weather, I decided to bring them inside and use flash to minimise any small movement.

It was only when I was setting the log up ready to take the pictures of the other fungi that I saw these ones growing out of the bark. I found them quite difficult to light at the extreme close up magnification used (the second picture is at 1 to 1 magnification, so show at about 10x on the screen).

The best lighting setup was with the flashgun firing through a diffuser to one side of the camera, with a small reflector placed the other side to reflect some light back into the shadows. Other lighting set-ups that I tried included: the raw flash, a diffuser close up, and the diffuser with the flashgun close to it. With some attempts, the wet log reflected the flash too much causing too many bright highlights.

The pictures below have had very little done to them - just an adjustment of the levels for contrast and brightness, resizing for the web, and just a touch of 'unsharp mask' to sharpen them up a bit.

All I have got to do now is to try and identify them!

Patterns Photography Competition

I am trying to select and prepare a single photograph for a competition in a new photography magazine. The subject is 'Patterns'. I thought I had some good subject material but, on working through the images I changed my mind - I will have to take some explicitly for the competition.

Below I show 4 of the images I was working with, and say what I think is wrong with each. You are invited to add your own comments.

1) Large plant pots.


This was amongst the first pictures I took with my digital SLR when I bought it last year. This picture was of a set of large ceramic plant pots at a garden centre. The original image was taken square-on which gave a lifeless image. Editing it to put it at an angle makes the picture more dynamic, but too much has been cropped off. If I could take the picture again, at an angle to include more pots, I think it has possibilities.

2)Clouds.

An interesting image, but this does not have enough patterning in it to suit the competition.


3) Corrugated Roof.


This is the corrugated roof of our barn in low sunlight. I thought this was a good abstract view, but when I printed it, Yeugh! It just did not work.

4) Can you guess what this is?


This, I think, is the strongest shot. I am quite happy with it apart from one fault. The lighting is not even across the print. The lower left side is lighter, with more reflection from the sky than the upper right. I have corrected the exposure to an extent but it is still not quite right - I will try and re-take the shot.

Cors Caron Bird Hide

What do you do when it is a wet and windy Sunday morning and you have guests staying? We were either brave or stupid because we donned out waterproofs and went to look at the new bird hide at the Cors Caron (Tregaron Bog) reserve. This link from the BBC gives more details of it.

Despite the rain lashing down with a brisk wind we had an enjoyable walk. Because of the conditions I did not take my main camera, but relied on my small digicam to take a few pictures when the rain eased off a bit. The first picture shows one of the two entrances. You walk to the hide, which is far out in the bog, on a new raised wooden walkway - this was quite impressive and the whole walk must be of the order of a mile or so, returning you to another entrance about 100 yards from the first.



I could not take pictures of the hide itself as the rain was too heavy at that point. However, I have mixed feelings about the hide. All the hides that I have seen up to know have long narrow viewing slots so as to keep you hidden from the birds. These slots are unglazed so as to give a clear view if you are using binoculars or a camera.

Not this hide. The whole side, from top to bottom is glazed with lovely clear glass. It gives a good spectator's view over the bog - as you can see from the photograph, but doesn't hide the viewer from the wildlife. And in poor weather the glass gets wet making binocular use and photography difficult.



This final picture was taken from a small viewing window to the north which looked like an attempt to keep the viewers hidden. Again this was glazed and covered with a fine mist giving a fuzzy view as can be seen by the final picture.



So, my thoughts were that this was a good attempt with an excellent walkway but I do wonder if the hide is 'fit for purpose'. Time will tell. I shall visit this place a lot more over the coming months.

Footnote. We have had a lot more rain since Sunday when these pictures were taken. This morning my wife went again with a friend. The water in the second picture is now covering the tree stumps and is nearly up to the platform.

Dawn over the Cambrian Mountains

One day last week (I have only just got around to sorting the pictures I took), there was a beautiful dawn with brilliant colours. When I first saw it, I was just getting ready to leave for work, so I grabbed my camera and tried a couple of hand-held shots through the window. As the light levels were too low, the hand-held photos were somewhat blurred.

Normally a decent dawn like this only last for a short time. By the time I got outside intending to leave, the colours were richer and brighter. So, I left my briefcase outside and went indoors, grabbed my camera and stood in the garden to get a few more pictures. This time they appeared better even though they were hand held - my tripod was locked in the barn and I did not think the dawn would last long enough to get it.

After taking a few photographs, I put the camera away, picked up my briefcase and went to my car. I looked again at the dawn and the colours had changed but were still brilliant. So I got my camera again and took another set of photographs.

Below I show three examples from those pictures I took. They were all taken within 8 minutes of each other. The first one was taken using the ISO 200 speed setting. As the shutter speed was 0.4 secs, I upped the ISO to 800. White balance was auto and the camera was set to full program mode for the shutter and aperture.

I have not made any adjustments to the images, just resized them for the blog - what you see is 'out of the camera'.

Seashore Photographs - Contre-Jour

This weekend I have spent some time creating a new section in the Miscellaneous gallery. This section covers the topic of 'the seashore' and is divided into a number of albums. I have started off by populating it with some photographs taken this autumn.

Some are 'stock' type record shots. Others are of a more artistic or interpretive nature. Below is one of my favourites:


This was taken on a fine day during a lunchtime stroll from my office - I am fortunate enough to work just a few minutes walk from the beach at Aberystwyth. This is taken at the southern end of the beach. I was intrigued by the pattern of footprints along the sand and the way they followed the shoreline defined by the rocky outcrop.

The picture itself was taken into the sun (contre-jour). The effect is to make the shot almost monochrome, although this is helped by the fact that the sand is quite a dark grey colour.

Another contre-jour picture is this one:


This was taken on the same fine day - you can just make out the large fluffy clouds bubbling up. Here there is a lone figure strolling along. The tones are very monochromatic - almost pure black and white, yet this is a full colour image. I have done nothing to remove the colour, just tweaked the exposure and contrast a little.

Have a look in the gallery and let me know what you like - or don't!

Deep Blue Fungus - Pulcherricium Caeruleum

In the last post I mentioned what I thought was an unusual blue fungus. It turns out that it is not so uncommon after all. My wife spotted it on the underside of a log. The habit of it is to grow on the underside of branches and fallen logs.

I had two sessions at photographing this 'parchment' fungus. The first day I photographed it in available light. I used my 100mm macro lens to get a variety of shots from quite close in to a distance enough to show a group of the growths on the log. They came out quite well in terms of record shots. The exposures were quite long and I think there was just a hint of blur caused by camera shake, even though the camera was on a tripod.

The second session was taken indoors using an off-camera flashgun diffused through either of two diffusers: a Lastolight unit that gives good diffusion but loses a fair amount of light, and a free one that came with a photographic magazine - this was made of a lighter material that did not diffuse quite so well but let more light through.

Below I show an example of both. Surprisingly, the dark blue/violet colour came our reasonably well!