Wistman's Wood Photo-walk

I'm not sure if it was the drive to the location or the anticipation of the walk but something put everybody off this week and I had a lonely photo-walk!

Still, got to look at the positives and that did mean that I had the splendor of Wistman's Wood to enjoy all by myself allowing for a free-roam over all the compositional opportunities on offer, and I think it's only fair for me to post something that will hopefully make you a little jealous of what you missed! :)

News flash! As it turns out I'd just missed Andy by mere minutes, and while he didn't make it as far as the woods he did take some great shots of the moors on the way!

Davidstow Airfield photo-walk

Davidstow Airfield is always an interesting place to visit, lots of old abandoned buildings with plenty of rusty old metal... it's photographic gold!

But the weather had the best surprise for us... wow! What a stunning end to the day! Here's Richard and Shaun setting up for their shots of the old control tower with that glorious sky:

Droplet Reflections

It's great to catch a water droplet sitting on or dripping from a flower, with another reflection in the droplet. Its much easier if you slow the action down, or keep the droplet exactly where you want it by adding glycerin to the water or even just using glycerin on its own. This may seem like a bit of a cheat, but sometimes mother nature needs a little helping hand to get the shot you want.

Inspiration - Michael Shainblum

Michael Shainblum is based on the West coast of America and has a knack for creating larger than life landscapes; his motto is "EAT, SLEEP, CREATE" though with the amount of quality work on his site you've got to question how much he eats and sleeps!

If you'd like to see more check out his website:

http://www.shainblumphoto.com/

https://500px.com/shainblum

Telephoto Compression

For my first top tip, I have used my lovely daughter Jasmine, one of our chickens and our old Massey 35 as you do.

This is just a fun little experiment to see the affect that increasing the focal length of that lens can have on the background. Think very carefully about the focal length you use when deciding on a shot, as the results can be drastically different, as can be seen in the series of three shots. Jasmine did not move from her position, the tractor stayed where it was, the only change was the distance between me and Jasmine and the focal length of the lens. It's amazing how much the distance between Jasmine and the tractor has seemingly decreased.

35mm

100mm

200mm

23 Ninja Tips For Your Next Photo Walk

An interesting video from the Cooperative of Photography, some interesting food-for-thought for your next street photography adventure!

Colliford Lake photo-walk

Well, what a difference! The good weather bought with it loads of club members to a bright and cheery evening at Colliford Lake.

The nice weather brings with it its own set of challenges; the sun was reflecting fiercely off the lake making it difficult to get a nice exposure and even having the sun out of frame still made one side of the image brighter than the other side. The cloudless sky meant that sweeping vista’s were off the menu so the trees that eek out their lives on the shore became a focus for many.

Our brave and fearless chairman Richard even spent half-an-hour wading through the lake trying to get an image of one of the lake’s fishes jumping out of the water, but they kept tormenting him by jump just out of frame!

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Still, it was interesting to see how different people interpreted the same location at the same time!

One Photograph Series - The Comfort Zone

Throughout my years of making photographs I have worked hard on forging my own style, taking a subject and putting my own stamp on it.

In the main my work is characterised by a few specific elements which tend to be black and white landscapes which have been taken with a 28mm lens which is a moderate wide angle.

Every now and then I try to mix things up. One area of photography which I enjoy immensely is street photography. This style of photography I find challenging and very much pushes me out of my comfort zone.

About 3 years ago I went to London for a day. Sebastiao Salgado had an exhibition of his latest work on at the Natural History Museum. I booked my time slot for an mid morning which then gave me a few hours in the afternoon to mooch about London taking photographs. For this trip I wanted to specifically shoot some street photography and I headed to the Southbank and Shoreditch areas.

When I’m looking for photographs I always want to find a different perspective and to try and be creative with a scene. I tried to stray away from photographs of people walking down the street holding shopping bags.

Whilst I was visiting a Shoreditch I came across a square which had lots of galleries and a camera fair (I didn’t buy anything!). It was quite late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to go down behind the tall buildings. I noticed the shadows on a wall of a couple of people who were chatting, I thought the shadows looked great on the wall and I moved in closer to frame them. I liked the separation of the people and I waited for a gesture which would give the photo more interest and if possible a perceived connection between the people.

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Camera: Fuji X-Pro1
Lens: 60mm (35mm equivalent 90mm)
Aperture: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/1000th sec
ISO: 1600

The colour palette is quite minimal with only 2 colours being present. I feel the colours play an important part in this image, the yellows and blues are a perfect match and complement each other very well. I had my 60mm lens on my camera which is not a traditional street photography focal length, and is probably my least used lens.

For me this photograph is almost the complete opposite to my usual type of photography I create. By pushing myself out of my comfort I will hopefully be able to develop my skills and become a better photographer.

Minions photo-walk

I think the weather put most people off, and I can’t say I blame them!

It was a a dreary, wet and foggy evening on Thursday when we met at Minions and decided to head for the quarry near the Caradon Hill Transmitter, from there we carried on towards the disused mine-stacks that litter the landscape.

It really does give the area an eerie feeling when you can hardly see anything in-front of you and photographically speaking can be seen as both a pro and a con, the con being that you can’t take in any grand vistas, but the pro being that you can isolate subjects and remove distractions from the frame.

At least we managed to find our way off the moorland with the only casualty being an umbrella which caught a full gust of wind and was ripped inside-out!

Using Dodging and Burning to emphasise elements

Dodging and Burning are terms used to describe over or under exposing specific areas of the image to highlight or detract specific features in the picture. Although this might sound trivial, the impact that it can have on the image can be immense as it allows you to draw the viewers eyes to the parts of the image you want them to see, while also reducing distractions.

The names come from techniques developed in the darkroom. Burning is used to increase the exposure in a specific part of an image; when a print was being developed it would be exposed normally, then using an opaque card with a shape cut into it the developer could add extra exposure to a specified area of the print to make that area lighter.

Dodging is effectively the opposite; using shaped pieces of opaque card the developer could stop light from exposing in certain areas and therefore reduce the exposure and make the affected part of the image darker.  In the darkroom the developer would need to know how long the overall exposure was, and how long to dodge and burn the set parts of the image to get the overall effect, and this process would need to be repeated every time a new print was required.

Luckily we can now make masks in image developing software to make the process much easier, and more importantly, easily repeatable.

I recently took this shot at Golitha Falls near Minions, this tree by the river really stood out as an interesting feature but as it was late in the day the light was fairly flat and even and viewing the image at home it was clear that the lone tree was getting lost within the woods beyond.

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Creating a mask that traces around each individual leaf sounds like an arduous task but luckily there is help at hand in the form of the “auto mask” option in Lightroom.  When this is turned on, instead of the brush just a round shape, it will look at the colour of the area you click on and stop the mask when it detects a distinct change, this allowed me to click near the edge of each leaf and let Lightroom detect the edge, here you can see the mask highlighted in red:

The mask was completed in less than 10 minutes which allowed me to pull the leaves on the tree out from the background, introducing a clear distinction between the tree and woods beyond:

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