Yachting on the Thames at Shepperton. The light was lovely on Sunday. I popped out to practise with my filters but when I saw these yachts on the Thames at Desborough Island, all thoughts of long exposures were forgotten.
Jen and I enjoyed a wonderful shoot on Chatley Heath yesterday. For a short while, the sun burned through the early mist to cast its rays across the landscape. Chatley Heath is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest and it is managed as a nature reserve by Surrey Wildlife Trust, a favourite charity of mine.
A view of Surrey, looking South from St. Martha’s Hill.
Still on an Autumn tack, I thought I’d share some seasonal shots of the different craft that can be found along the Wey Navigation in Weybridge.
Situated on the confluence of the Thames and the Wey, and with the Wey Navigation running through it as well, Weybridge has a lot of watercraft, of all shapes and sizes.
I am mostly content to admire them from the towpath, however.
Of course, there could only ever be one quotation for this post:
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Our very late Autumn this year has given so many opportunities to get out with the camera, I’ve hardly been able to keep up with downloading the images! These shots are from my outing last week with Jenifer Bunnett. She found this beautiful set of fishing lakes, Frensham Trout Fisheries, and, apart from a solitary fisherman, we had them to ourselves.
The presence of a waterfall was fortuitous as I had only just the day before taken delivery of my new Lee Filters!
I had a lot of fun experimenting with my five filters: the 105mm circ. polariser, .6 hard grad, .9 soft grad, .9 pro glass and Big Stopper. The good news was that I had remembered all I had learned on the workshop ten days earlier.
The bad news was the circ. polariser created a horrible vignette when I used it with my 16-35mm lens at 16-20mm. Hugely disappointing as that is my lens of choice for landscape work. I was advised to use my 24-105mm on the course so this problem did not come up then. 😦
The tiny, corrugated iron, ‘mission’ church of St. George is in the hamlet of West End, near Esher in Surrey. It was built in 1879 on land given by Queen Victoria so that the poor labourers of the village might be able to worship without the steep, muddy climb into Esher. Despite its temporary nature, the church, which overlooks the cricket green, is currently 134 not out!
Many thanks to my friend, Tony Antoniou, who kindly popped round yesterday to re-calibrate my monitor and at the same time showed me how to get better results from the HDR facility in Photoshop CC. This photo is my first effort using the tool properly. Tony is a talented photographer with a flair for environmental portraits and image manipulation. Do pop over and have a look at his website.
Clearing out old files, still, I came across some shots of greenfly from May and June and thought they made a set of greedy, green, garden pests. With apologies to all the gardeners out there.
A couple of these shots are as much if not more about the background than the aphids themselves.
They are a little bit pretty seen singly like this? Not convinced? 😉
Over on my Facebook page I am giving away a 2014 calendar to one winner chosen on Monday next week from those who nominate a Surrey beauty spot. Do visit if you’re local. I am planning to compile a list of nominated Surrey locations to photograph in 2014, with a view to making a 2015 calendar from the best images.
f/11, 1/25, ISO 100, 16mm, circ. polariser
There is a heavy hint of change in the air. The trees no longer bask in full Autumn glory. Instead, their leaves billow under the wheels of passing vehicles. Twice this week my day has begun with scraping frost from car windows. Staying out to photograph the sunset, my hands and feet became numb from the cold.
f/11, 1/15, ISO100, 16mm, circ. polariser
Perhaps in sympathy, it’s been all change in my digital life this week. I have finally downloaded Photoshop Creative Cloud and Lightroom 5. For photographers there’s a special subscription deal for just under £9 a month. That’s a huge discount, but hurry, it ends on 2nd December. It will take me a while to get to grips with Lightroom as I haven’t used it before but PS CC seems fairly intuitive, not too much of a leap from CS4.
One of the things that’s much improved from CS4 is the HDR facility. The image below is my first attempt. Just three exposures blended by PS CC. It’s certainly light years ahead of what CS4 would have produced but I’m still not sure about it. I had to tweak a lot to get it to look even vaguely natural. Perhaps it’s a good thing I have ordered some ND graduated filters so I can do it in camera instead!
f/16, 1/6, ISO 100, 16mm, circ. polariser
Just to make life even harder, I also upgraded my iMac operating system from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. It seems mostly familiar but for some inexplicable reason I now have to scroll in the opposite direction. Mighty confusing! There’s probably a setting I need to tick somewhere. (Scratches head bemusedly.)
And, just to add to it all, I have finally given up on Redbubble and am working on creating a new website with Photium. More on that soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these further images from my walk last week along the Wey Navigation towpath.
Two more shots from my stroll along my local stretch of the Wey Navigation in Weybridge. The top one is a panorama, stitched from five separate vertical images to make a big 11000 by 7000 (approx) pixel file, which will make a mighty print, if I ever print it. The lower image is the same viewpoint as my moonrise shot last month.
I am now writing for a local website once a week and the second shot featured in my article last week.
I had a lovely day yesterday in the company of Jenifer Bunnett at Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey. Magical light and location, and a small starburst in keeping with this week’s theme. One of the many wonderful things about Autumn as a landscape photography season is that the sun never gets very high in the sky, making for softer light, longer shadows and the availability of starbursts filtered through leaves.
Focused Moments 