Thursday, 16 February 2012
An experiment
Messing about in Lightroom I tried out the gallery creator for the first time with some shots from my walk around the village. This is purely to see if the gallery can be embedded in this blog. Looks as if it can. The gallery can be viewed larger here.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
The internet is stupid
Not only is the internet stupid, but there could be people even less bright who believe it. Well, if there's anyone daft enough to think this is right they must be as smart as an amoeba.
Monday, 13 February 2012
Hacked off
It was a bad day at 'the office' this morning, so when I was free in mid afternoon I took myself out for a couple of hours to chill. The upside was that I finally decided to call it a day on chasing wildlife around with a long lens. To do it well it takes the same level of commitment, and a similar level of patience and determination, as is required to catch big fish. That sort of investment I'll save for the fishes.
What I realised is that I'm an opportunistic photographer. I like to go about observing the world and making pictures of little bits of it that I find interesting. No matter what they are. I also realised that I am getting a handle on seeing landscape pictures. This is not easy in the flat world I live in, and it means not making pictures that follow most of the tropes of landscape photography. So boring landscapes is what I have to make do with.
Today I was aided by an elevated viewpoint walking along a flood-bank. Although I had taken a DSLR and long lens to look for birdies I also had the X10 round my neck. It makes a reasonable job of landscapes. There is detail, but it's not as smooth or crisp as a larger camera would produce. Good enough for the web and A4 prints though. Straight out of the camera the RAW files look rather bland. However the information is there.
I think I'm still tending to go overboard on the processing. I am also wondering where the 'truth' lies in pictures that are manipulated like this. Does it matter so long as the information was there to start with? If I was painting the picture I'd surely try to paint how it felt to experience a place rather than get involved in a futile chase for strict verisimilitude.
One thing I will not be doing, ever, is removing pylons and suchlike from my landscape pictures. They are part of our world, so should be left in the frame. In fact, I often deliberately chose views which include man made 'intrusions' into the natural world. You can call it a cultural commentary or something if you like. It's just the way I see things. Even the marks made by a tractor working a field can become part of the subject matter and composition.
The picture above was tricky to process. I haven't made the best of it. I'm thinking now that's because it would have benefited from the use of a polarising filter. Not to mention different light.
I can understand why people photograph landscapes. There is always a willing subject. It requires no interaction with other people. However, it mostly seems to be about making pretty pictures. For me it's more about the spirit of place and man's manipulation of the world than an idealised, nostalgic, romanticised vision. Unfortunately I can see how, to really get to grips with this, it could require the same depth of commitment that wildlife photography does. It could also require a similar investment in equipment. Although it may not need wildly expensive telephoto lenses, I am not convinced that even a high resolution DSLR is suitable and think that to do it true justice it would require a view camera and a set of lenses. Then again that kind of smacks of a romanticised nostalgia for a way of working!
What I realised is that I'm an opportunistic photographer. I like to go about observing the world and making pictures of little bits of it that I find interesting. No matter what they are. I also realised that I am getting a handle on seeing landscape pictures. This is not easy in the flat world I live in, and it means not making pictures that follow most of the tropes of landscape photography. So boring landscapes is what I have to make do with.
Today I was aided by an elevated viewpoint walking along a flood-bank. Although I had taken a DSLR and long lens to look for birdies I also had the X10 round my neck. It makes a reasonable job of landscapes. There is detail, but it's not as smooth or crisp as a larger camera would produce. Good enough for the web and A4 prints though. Straight out of the camera the RAW files look rather bland. However the information is there.
 |
| Before |
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| After |
One thing I will not be doing, ever, is removing pylons and suchlike from my landscape pictures. They are part of our world, so should be left in the frame. In fact, I often deliberately chose views which include man made 'intrusions' into the natural world. You can call it a cultural commentary or something if you like. It's just the way I see things. Even the marks made by a tractor working a field can become part of the subject matter and composition.
The picture above was tricky to process. I haven't made the best of it. I'm thinking now that's because it would have benefited from the use of a polarising filter. Not to mention different light.
I can understand why people photograph landscapes. There is always a willing subject. It requires no interaction with other people. However, it mostly seems to be about making pretty pictures. For me it's more about the spirit of place and man's manipulation of the world than an idealised, nostalgic, romanticised vision. Unfortunately I can see how, to really get to grips with this, it could require the same depth of commitment that wildlife photography does. It could also require a similar investment in equipment. Although it may not need wildly expensive telephoto lenses, I am not convinced that even a high resolution DSLR is suitable and think that to do it true justice it would require a view camera and a set of lenses. Then again that kind of smacks of a romanticised nostalgia for a way of working!
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Breaking in the boots
This afternoon I took my new boots for a walk, and some camera gear despite the mist that descended after lunch. I had nothing much in mind but I was determined to find some love for the 14-24 which I started the walk off with. I keep getting the horrible feeling I ought to have gone for something less ultrawide-to-wide. It has its uses, and it's scarily sharp, but it's uses are specialised. I took some shots with it that failed to satisfy compositionally. The most satisfactory one was a shot of a bridge which sits well in my current trend for taking boring almost symmetrical landscapes.
I walked up the side of the drain in the above photo fully intending to use the lens around the barn just about visible in the distance. However when I got there there were thousands of pink-footed geese feeding in the field beyond the barn, with more flighting in. I swapped to the 70-200 (and cursed not slipping the teleconverter in the bag) in the hope of getting some shots of geese coming in to land. It was not to be. So I took a couple of shots of the back wall of the barn. Who says you don't need vibration reduction and high ISO performance? Well people like me who hate tripods need them both!
I left the longer lens on an carried on my walk. The land around the drain is flat and featureless, and with the low mist I didn't think the wide view would be very revealing. There was a nice arrangement of plastic crates left in a leek field. The lone red crate performing Constable's trick for setting off landscape paintings. The mist and the light was less than conducive to a good picture though. Constable would probably have left his paints at home today.
The first shot is a 10x8 crop which I find more relaxed than 3x2. Somehow there's a greater stillness in landscapes framed at this ratio. Or so it seems to me. I can't decide if the wider or zoomed view makes the most of the subject. The flat lighting does neither any favours.
Something that displaying all these shots at sizes suitable for the web fails to do is show the fine detail and texture that the original files posses and which would be obvious in a print. This is one reason I make prints of my favourite pictures. These are then popped into cheap frames and scattered around the place to give me time to mull over them and work out if they are as good as I initially think they are. Only by living with pictures can you get a good handle on their merits.
I walked up the side of the drain in the above photo fully intending to use the lens around the barn just about visible in the distance. However when I got there there were thousands of pink-footed geese feeding in the field beyond the barn, with more flighting in. I swapped to the 70-200 (and cursed not slipping the teleconverter in the bag) in the hope of getting some shots of geese coming in to land. It was not to be. So I took a couple of shots of the back wall of the barn. Who says you don't need vibration reduction and high ISO performance? Well people like me who hate tripods need them both!
I left the longer lens on an carried on my walk. The land around the drain is flat and featureless, and with the low mist I didn't think the wide view would be very revealing. There was a nice arrangement of plastic crates left in a leek field. The lone red crate performing Constable's trick for setting off landscape paintings. The mist and the light was less than conducive to a good picture though. Constable would probably have left his paints at home today.
The first shot is a 10x8 crop which I find more relaxed than 3x2. Somehow there's a greater stillness in landscapes framed at this ratio. Or so it seems to me. I can't decide if the wider or zoomed view makes the most of the subject. The flat lighting does neither any favours.
Something that displaying all these shots at sizes suitable for the web fails to do is show the fine detail and texture that the original files posses and which would be obvious in a print. This is one reason I make prints of my favourite pictures. These are then popped into cheap frames and scattered around the place to give me time to mull over them and work out if they are as good as I initially think they are. Only by living with pictures can you get a good handle on their merits.
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