Dungeness, finally

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Rachael

16mm, f/11, 1/6, ISo 100, .9 soft grad.

Having holidayed in the mountains this year, I have been feeling in need of a coast ‘fix’. So, on Thursday, Jen and I made an evening dash south. We chose Dungeness, honeypot location for landscape photographers. Having lived in the south of England for most of my life, I am not sure how I managed never to go to Dungeness before!

102mm, f/7.1, 1.6″, ISO 400

The forecast predicted changeable weather and dramatic skies so we had high expectations. We should have known better. There was a small amount of texture in the sky on our arrival and the promise of some lightning, but in the end the rain washed in and the sky smoothed over.

200mm, f/8, 0.8″, ISO 400

I took all the usual shots anyway. The scene below is particularly oft-captured, as I know only too well from my evenings judging at camera clubs. But, hey, I’d never been there before! Had to take The Shot. Would have been rude not to.

58mm, f/11, 2″, ISO 100

When the sky gets boring, the long lens comes out for some detail work. Dungeness certainly offers lots of potential there. It’s not my usual style but I enjoyed capturing some images of the netting against the hut.

200mm, f/11, 1.6″, ISO 400

I am thinking these two might make a nice diptych.

200mm, f/11, 5″, ISO 100

I liked the texture of the partially burnt hut wall.

200mm, f/7.1, 3.2″, ISO 400

I can finally see what everyone else has known for ages: Dungeness is cool – weird, but definitely cool. I will be back.

blend of 5 exposures, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/4, ISO 800

Mountain weather

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Rachael

Last month we were in the Canadian Rockies, one of my very favourite places. While we were in Banff we had changeable weather. This was great news for the locals as it helped fight several serious wildfires. It was also great news for me for a less serious reason, as it added drama to my photos. They say that if you don’t like the weather in the Rockies you only need wait 15 minutes and it will have changed. Makes sense to me.

Of panoramas and exhibitions

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Rachael

Still morning, Hamnøya, Lofoten Islands

It’s been a very busy time since my last post; I can hardly believe it’s only a month! We have just returned from two weeks in the Canadian Rockies, one of my very favourite parts of the world. In the meantime, the image above, from my trip to Norway in March, won the panoramics competition at Outdoor Photography magazine and was published in the latest issue, which was waiting for me on my doormat when we got home. Outdoor Photography is my favourite photography magazine and the only one I always read, so it was extra special to find one of my images with a full page all to itself. (For those who like to know, the image is a stitch of 7 x 3 bracketed exposures, HDR and stitch achieved in Lightroom 6.)

Winner in Outdoor Photography magazine

The timing was particularly nice as that picture is also the main image in a panel I am exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in London this week. The other two images appear below. I hung my panel on Saturday and the private view party was that evening. Much fun was had by all; I caught up with some friends and met lots of new ones and the party continued on afterwards in Covent Garden.

‘Five’: Venice

The exhibition is called Light and Land on the Mall and it is open until Monday 10th August. I am heading up there again tomorrow to meet some more friends and possibly on Friday as well. If you are thinking of visiting, let me know – maybe we can meet for a coffee.

‘Formation’: Winchelsea

Although the exhibition is hung now, the work continues as I am participating in another exhibition next month, again in London, at the Oxo Tower, with a larger panel of different images (black and white this time). Then, in October, I have my first solo exhibition, at Arté Gallery, kindly sponsored by Martin & Wheatley. More anon.

A well-earned glass of wine at the Private View party. Phew!

Ephemeral beauty

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Rachael

For the last three years, June/July has seen me out searching for that ephemeral wonder, the wild poppy field. This year, together with my photo-buddy Jenifer Bunnett, I went out looking for poppies on four separate occasions. Out first safari was disappointing; we found poppies galore but couldn’t get close to them thanks to some determined fencing. The second was much more successful, thanks to a generous tip from another photographer, Malcolm Oakley, on Twitter.Much hiking and a pair of binoculars were needed but we found them, in three patches, against the flank of Black Patch Hill near Storrington in the South Downs National Park. We were able to return a few days later for some gentler evening light.Poppy season is now mostly over down here in the South. Poppies do not reliably flower in the same place year after year. Their seeds need rough handling to germinate but then the ground must be left fallow to allow them to bloom, although they do well at the edges of rape fields where the rape seed has not taken hold (or it has been eaten by birds). But not knowing where they’ll be next year is all part of the adventure, and their ephemerality only adds to their allure.If you fancy joining the poppy hunt next year, there is now a group on Facebook dedicated to sharing locations for poppies and other seasonal wildflower displays: Poppy and Flower Site Finder 2015.

A rare picture of me in action, thanks to Jen.

Creativity with bluebells

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Rachael

I have spent much of the last two weeks out and about in our local landscape capturing images of bluebells. Nearly 50% of the world’s bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) grow in the UK. Every Spring, for about two weeks, ancient woodlands are carpeted in nodding azure bells. If the Japanese go out in droves to appreciate cherry blossom, we Brits do the same for bluebells.

Of course, they are irresistible to the landscape photographer. But capturing pleasing photos of bluebells is harder than you might think. The temptation is to go wide, to capture all the majesty of the forest, but this tends to exaggerate the distance between the flowers, minimising the profusion that attracted your eye in the first place. So a longer focal length, that compresses distance, is often the better solution.

Finding a strong composition can be challenging. Paths, the more winding the better, create shapes that led the eye into and through the frame.

Colour balance is also tricky. I often see comments on-line that either praise or criticise bluebell pictures for the way they reproduce the colour of the flowers: ‘nice to see proper blues” is typical. But bluebells actually look different depending on the light.

In sunlight or at certain times of day (golden hour, for example) they take on a mauve/magenta tint. Pre-dawn or in shade, they appear more blue. Equally, the fresh spring leaves of the trees under which the bluebells grow, especially beech, have a strong, almost acid-green colour, that can look over-done to people who have never properly looked at the real thing.

It’s always a good idea to try different apertures. Landscapers tend to favour narrow apertures to achieve ‘front-to-back’ sharpness. But, sometimes, using a wide aperture to narrow your depth of field can provide a more pleasing image, just picking out a detail and allowing the rest of the scene to become a blur.

Speaking of blur, on breezy days it’s worth experimenting with shutter speed to capture some movement in the flowers or the leaves of the trees.

In a wide view, it creates a subtle. dreamy feel. Closer up, more abstract images can be made.

There are other ways to record movement. Intentional camera movement, or “ICM”, is very on-trend at the moment. Put simply, the camera is moved while the shutter is open. The result, when it works, is a painterly, semi-abstract rendering of the subject. The technique suits woodland because it tends to simplify, which can be helpful in cluttered forest scenes.

One must be prepared for a lot of out-takes when using ICM, but it’s all fun and in the spirit of experimentation. I find that it helps to choose scenes where there are bold shapes, like tree trunks, to give your image structure. Without them, ICM images can become a formless jumble. I also like images where there are still some recognisable details within the blur, as in these extracts from the above image, where an oak leaf can be recognised…

… and, below, where the frill from a single bloom emerges (bottom right) from the blue haze.

Equally in vogue, making multiple-exposures in-camera can have unexpected and pleasing results. Many modern digital cameras make this simple. I used my Fuji X-E1 for the shot below. The image on which you are going to superimpose a second shot is shown in live view under the picture you are now taking, enabling you to visualise exactly what you are going to achieve. This image features stitchwort, tiny white flowers I found growing among the bluebells at a local copse on Tuesday.

Bluebell season is mostly over now, but it will surely return to delight us all again next Spring. I think it’s lovely that the Japanese have a word for their national cherry-blossom gazing, ‘hanami’. Perhaps we need to invent one for bluebells. Any suggestions?

Bleak winter

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Rachael

The weather during my recent trip to the Lofoten Islands was often disappointing, but necessity being the mother of invention, I tried to make the most of it. This minimal image captures something of the lonely, bleak feeling of these islands when the weather closes in.

Aurora over Lofoten

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Rachael

I am just back from an exciting trip to the Lofoten Islands, where we were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights on two evenings. Before I went, I was ambivalent about seeing aurora. There are so many pictures of them on the internet these days, and I had seen them before, in Canada decades ago. My purpose in going to Norway was, rather, to capture the beautiful, snow-covered landscape.
However, when green ribbons ripped across the sky that first night on Skagsanden beach, I was as excited as anyone. I was unprepared for the raw power of the spectacle, and for how fast the lights can move. Shutter speeds as fast as 1.3″ were required and even then the lights were occasionally burnt out. It seems incredible that all this drama is silent, apart from whoops of exhilaration from onlookers. I fear photographing aurora may be addictive.

Three from Thurne

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Rachael

During my trip to Norfolk last month, I had the chance to spend a large part of one day at Thurne wind pump. I took many of the usual, landscape type shots but I also enjoyed the chance to use my long lens and capture some graphic black and white details.

My photographic eye tends to veer automatically to the large vistas but I want to start catching more intimate aspects of the landscapes I visit too. It’s a new project for 2015.

Do you think your eye tends to favour one sort of composition to the detriment of others and is there another you’d particularly like to master too?

Fun with sea and filters

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Rachael

The good folk at Wex Photographic have asked me to write a post about how I use filters to achieve different shutter speeds using images from my recent trip to Brittany. Regular readers may remember I did a piece about this last month and promised a second instalment, so this is it. Today, I will talk a little more about the equipment I use. Almost every image in this post was taken using my Canon 5D mark iii and Canon’s 16-35mm f2.8 L lens, a Manfrotto tripod and ball head, and timer remote switch RST-7002 (the only exception is the one from Norfolk, where I used Canon’s 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens).

1/60, f/9, 35mm, ISO 200, 2-stop hard ND grad, circ. polariser.

The first few images in this post were taken on the same occasion, with the same composition, only a few minutes, or even seconds apart. They show the effect of different shutter speeds on breaking waves. The light was very dynamic that evening, with the sun going in and out of patchy clouds, so I had to adapt my ISO and aperture to achieve the shutter speeds I wanted without constantly having to change filters.

1/4, f/11, 35mm, ISO 200, 2-stop hard ND grad, 6-stop ‘Little Stopper’, circ. polariser.

I use the LEE 100mm wide-angle filter system. As you can see from the image captions, most of these shots were taken using the 0.6 (2-stop) hard ND (neutral density) graduated filter. This enabled me to balance the exposure by darkening the sky, thus bringing out the foreground that for a lot of the time was in shadow. I have noticed on my workshops that people tend to be anxious about using a hard grad for fear that the line between dark and light will be too obvious. However, on the standard hard grad the transition still has a small band of gradation, allowing for a little ‘wiggle room’ in its placing, and I use this grad for 90% of my landscape work. When shooting in woodland, however, I tend to use my 0.9 (3-stop) soft grad.

0.3″, f/13, ISO 100, 35mm, 2-stop hard ND grad, 6-stop ‘Little Stopper’, circ. polariser.

To lengthen the exposure time for the whole image (i.e. without gradation), I have three go-to ND filters, the 10-stop ‘Big Stopper”, the 6-stop “Little Stopper” and a 3-stop “pro-glass”. Lee introduced the Little Stopper last year and I find that I now use it for most of my long exposure work, only using its bigger brother for very long exposures or very bright conditions.

1.3″, f/13, 35mm, ISO 100, 2-stop hard ND grad, 6-stop ‘Little Stopper’, circ. polariser.

A third, but invaluable, filter is the circular polariser. Strangely, despite all the advancements in digital imaging and developing, I don’t think it is yet possible fully to replicate the effect of a polariser in post-production. It can be used to boost colours, reduce or boost reflections and define a blue sky. (It also adds up to two stops to your exposure time.) The visual impact is strongest when used at right angles to the sun but it can still have an effect at other angles. However, a polariser should be used with caution on a very wide angled lens when it can add a patchy look to the sky. The Lee polariser sits in front of the filters on a special ring adapted to screw onto the filter holder. Be sure, if you are going to use it on a wide lens, to buy the ultra slim polariser. Lee only introduced it recently. When I first invested in the system, I made the mistake of buying their standard 105mm only to find it vignetted horribly on my wide lens, forcing me to invest the same money all over again in Heliopan’s ultra slim equivalent.

20″, f/16, 35mm, ISO 50, 2-stop hard ND grad, 10-stop ‘Big Stopper’, circ. polariser.

As you can see from the images, even quite small adjustments in shutter speed affect the appearance of moving water. I like speeds of between 1/5 and 0.8″ as they introduce a pleasing sense of movement without smoothing the water completely. I find 1/5, or thereabouts, is particularly good for catching the way water seems to scatter and fragment in clashes or peaks of waves, as in the shot below, taken on a different occasion, on the Norfolk coast.

1/5, f/8, ISO 50, 123mm, 3-stop ‘pro-glass’.

Not every shot has to be a long exposure, of course. In the image below, I liked the effect of the sunset light on the water and wanted to capture more texture.

1/50, f/3.5, ISO 400, 22mm. 2-stop hard grad.

However, sometimes the serenity of a longer exposure is more pleasing, as in the image below, taken during a subtle dawn at the same location the next day.

101″, f/16, ISO 100, 23mm, 2-stop ND hard grad and ‘Little Stopper’.

If you are thinking of investing in some filters, Wex are kindly offering readers of this blog a discount. Details as follows:

10% off LEE Filters
Start Date: 17/03/2015
End Date: 17/04/2015
Code: SC10LF
Link: http://www.wexphotographic.com/square-or-rectangular-filters-lee-filters/b3073-m144.
T&Cs: http://www.wexphotographic.com/?/popups/terms-promo-leefilters-17032015.html

A turbulent evening

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Rachael

During the first couple of days of my trip photographing lighthouses in Brittany earlier this month, we had some nicely changeable weather. The wind was so strong at this lighthouse, it was hard to keep the camera and tripod still enough. Black and white seemed to suit this two-toned structure.

Dawn the next day, and it was still just as windy but the sky was serene, heralding more peaceful weather ahead. A long exposure in colour seemed the way to go. I love going back to locations and capturing their different moods.

* * * * *

Still catching up with my 365 redux backlog. 365/66, 68 and 69 are from 2009, the year of my original, and more conventional, project 365. It’s handy to have that project to rely on when I hit a patch where I haven’t taken pictures in other years. True to my pledge, I have re-edited these. 67 is from last year, a shot previously unshared of a midge on a pieris shrub in my garden. I am enjoying seeing how my images have improved (to my eye, anyway) in the 7 years since I switched to digital, and became obsessed.

365/66

365/67

365/68

365/69

Focused Moments

A professional photographer's life

Tag Archives: landscape photography