The joy of landscape

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Almost every photographer I know, whatever genre they work in, will say that they enjoy doing landscape photography. I’m a commercial photographer so I spend a lot of time doing everything from head shots (or business portraits, as I prefer to call them), to products, services, interiors and much in between. Most of this is done indoors with artificial lighting.

It’s therefore a joy to get out in the fresh air from time to time to indulge in some landscape photography, working with the natural environment and available light. It makes you think differently and engage in a fresh way with subject, light and equipment.

I’m also fortunate to live in Scotland where you are never too far from wild countryside and blessed with so many visual delights.

Here are a couple of shots, from a location not too far from my home in Fife. This is the Yad waterfall in Maspie Den on the Falkland Estate. I’m grateful to my business associates at Fife Networking, and especially Craig Allan, for encouraging me to post the photos after mentioning Maspie Den in a Zoom meeting this morning. Thanks folks!

Behind you!

No, it’s not pantomime season.

Rather, it’s a reminder to me that it’s always good to have a look behind.

Cattail reed heads

I went out for my daily “walkcercise” yesterday evening instead of the usual time of just after lunch. “Walkcercise” is what I’ve termed my permitted daily outing for exercise during the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Natrually, I took a camera with me, on this occasion hoping to see one of the local deer or a heron down by the river. Typically, when I have a camera with me, they were hiding.

I hate to return empty-handed so thought I’d grab a shot of these cattail reed heads as I quite liked the general fluffiness of the look and I thought it might make an interesting tonal study.

Having taken a few shots I set off to continue the walk and within only a few paces had to cross a little wall with steps on both sides. Before going up the steps I stopped to look back and was so pleased I did as the cattails were beautifully backlit by the setting sun.

backlit cattail reedheads

Actually the sun had fallen just below the visible horizon so the light was softer and more diffused creating a wispy almost hazy look. So much more interesting than what I’d just shot and a good reminder of the value of checking the scene behind you.

As I’d been hoping to catch some wildlife my camera was essentially set up for that job. I was using a 55-200mm zoom lens and as such wnated a shutter speed fast enough to eliminate camera shake and an aperture that would allow decent depth of field should I have to shoot fast. I therefore set up at 1/640 at f8 and opted to use auto ISO.

There was minimal editing in Lightroom to adjust for lens distortion and slight tweaks to tone and contrast.

This is one of those images to be seen full from a proper distance; it’s not for pixel-peepers.

Forced to think and see a little differently

What am I doing during this time of lockdown as the world deals with the Coronavirus?

As a professional photographer whose business is currently in hibernation, part of what I am doing is taking the time to practice and learn. To experiment with new techniques and seek inspiration. As a result I am tuning in to some photography channels on YouTube which normally I only have the time to look at occasionally. One of my favourites is Ted Forbes’ channel, The Art of Photography. I discovered there, that he’s started a series of assignments which are very much for this time of lockdown. I just watched his video setting the Available Light Photo Assignment and it certainly inspired me.

The initial assignment is to choose a window and observe it (ideally photograph it) hourly throughout the day to see how the light changes. The idea is that this will allow you to plan when to use the light in different ways. Ted introduced a few photographers as examples including the Czech photographer, Josef Sudek, whose work is a good example of using available light. This image called Glass with Flower is one such example.

My wife and I have been living in a new house for almost three years now and as we plan out the garden we have both been very conscious of how the sun tracks across it. We have a cabin in the garden with a wooden table and there are net curtains on the windows. Today is very overcast so there’s no directional light to speak of and I thought therefore that the cabin might offer an opportunity to experiment with available light. I realised this would be something of a challenge with such diffused light but also thought that the net curtains would add to the diffusion and it would be interesting to see what I could come up with.

It would have to be a still life and whilst I wanted to try to get the feel of Sudek’s style I didn’t want to do a rip-off, so a glass with flower was out of the question. In my business life I do product photography among other things and normally that’s under studio conditions with very controlled lighting, so I thought it might be good to try something out with available light. But what to shoot?

Then in a moment of inspiration, while washing my hands (as we are advised to do regularly) I thought I would photograph the soap. I thought it might be boring just as it stands so I grabbed some glass beads which I thought might add to the compositon and potentially do something interesting with the light.

With props and camera in hand I hot-footed it to the cabin and here’s what I came up with:

soap and beads

It’s no award winner, but that’s not the point. It was fascinating to do this and it forced me to think differently about using light compositionally. When you examine Dudek’s still lifes, it’s almost light itself that is the subject. I wanted to achieve as much of the desired effect as possible in camera, but I have to confess this has had post-production in Lightroom and Photoshop. Here are the details:

It was shot hand-held at 1/125 sec at f4 with an ISO of 320 and a focal length of 24mm. This was underexposing from the TTL metering by about 2 stops. It was cropped in Lightroom to a square format (which I intended from the outset) and I also made slight adjustments to contrast and highlights as well as converting to black & white. In Photoshop I added a gentle sepia filter.

Originally I shot the bottle on it’s own then added the glass beads by just scattering them randomly. I really liked the way they picked up the light and behaved a little differently depending on whether they had fallen on the flat side or rounded side.

Having been inspired by the way the beads worked with the light, I decided to make them the subject resulting in this shot:

glass beads

Again, this was hand held and taken on the follwoing settings:

1/160sec at f5.6 on ISO 320 and a focal length of 55mm. This was only cropped in Lightroom with adjustments to contrast and highlights and a black and white conversion.

The I wondered about leaving the beads in colour and having everything else in black and white. Here’s the result of that:

green beads

To get this, I went back to the colour shot and desaturated all the colour channels apart from green and aqua.

I’ve really enjoyed doing this and being forced to think and see a little differently.

Which of the glass beads shots do you prefer? The pure black and white or the green? Let me know in the comments – I’d really appreciate it.

Ted Forbes, I will be back on your channel for more assignments!

A beacon of safety

Ardnamurchan Lighthouse

Pic of the week – Friday 24 May 2019

As the shroud of dusk envelopes the landscape as a portent of night, so Ardnamurchan Lighthouse springs into action protecting the sailors and their ships from the most westerly point on the British Mainland.

This is one from the archive and the metadata tells me the following:

The photo was taken at 19:51hrs on 24 September 2015. I’m not sure if that’s the moment the shutter opened or closed, because this was a 25 second exposure at f20. I shot at ISO 100 to minimise noise and quite wide at 26mm. All editing has been done in Lightroom, and mostly with a light touch. I opted for a sqaure crop as I will be using this across my social media, but I like the resultant composition, I also added a slight vignette to help draw the eye to the light.

As I said above, Ardnamurchan Lighhouse is at the most westerly point on the British mainland positioned at Latitude 56° 43.6′ N Longitude 6° 13.4′ W . It’s been been safely guiding ships through the waters off Scotland’s west coast since 1849 and is now fully automated. The lighthouse tower is 36 metres tall rising 55 metres above the rocks. It was built in 1849 using granite from the Isle of Mull and was designed by Alan Stevenson, uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose family designed most of Scotland’s lighthouses over a period of 150 years. Apparently it is the only lighthouse in the world designed in an “Egyptian“ style.

Sometimes it’s worth turning around

The Kelpies

These are magnificant stainless steel clad sculptures standing around 30 metres tall located by the Forth & Clyde canal at Falkirk. Since they were opened to the public in 2013 they have become a favourite subject for photographers. As you can tell, I am no exception. Mostly they are photographed in a couple of ways: relatively close up and showing their context beside the canal, and also at dusk or night when they are illuminated.

I’ve been a couple of times to take some photographs and have done the “usual” thing with them, so nothing too different really apart from a couple of very tight close-ups which show only parts of the sculptures. On one occasion, I had taken all the shots I wanted and was heading back to the car when I turned round and was met by this view. I immediately liked it. I was drawn to the way the fading light from the setting sun was lighting the Kelpies and how they were contrasted against the sky. I also really liked the dusting of snow on the Ochil Hills in the distance. There is something appealing in the contrast between the softness of the snow and the hardness of the steel Kelpies. I also liked that this view set them in a context not usually represented in photographs. It also felt like the one with its head down was grazing on the trees rising from just below the ridge. That seemed to me such a natural thing that it almost brought the Kelpies to life.

I’d been shooting on a tripod but this was such an opportunity in the fading light that I just went hand-held and aimed to get a shot before the light was gone. I was also cold and keen to be back in the car. For those interested in such things, this was shot at 1/1000sec at f8 on an ISO of 400 and at a focal length of 55mm (there must have been more light than I remember). The image was shot in RAW (as per usual) and initially processed (for all the usual things) in Lightroom. I then used Photoshop to remove some distractions which included power lines and some random birds which were really doing nothing to add to the image.

The Kelpies are well worth a visit. They were designed by sculptor Andy Scott and the name Kelpies was chosen by Scottish Canals. Kelpies come from Scottish myth and legend and are  said to be shape-changing spirits of waterways. There’s some thought that the name may come from the Scottish Gaelic words ‘cailpeach’ or ‘colpach’, meaning heifer or colt. Kelpies are said to haunt rivers and streams typically appearing in the shape of  horses. Of course, horses were also a feature of canals when they were used to pull barges. This makes these magnificent sculptures so appropriate to sit by the canal.

This image is available as a Fine Art print on my website along with another couple of more “usual” shots of the Kelpies.

 

I had no idea…

Well, it’s been a busy week with all manner of boring (but necessary) admin tasks to attend to and yesterday evening I realised I didn’t have a subject when I intended to write a blog post today. I decided, therefore, to take the initiative and head out with my camera and no clear idea as to what I would shoot.

Inspired by some shots my family had taken on a trip to Elie in the East Neuk of Fife, and  only a short drive from home, I set out for there to see what might be on offer photographically. As I prepared to leave, the dog was giving me “the look” which was enough to persuade me to take her along. If nothing else, the evening air would be good for both of us.

I parked up near the Fife Coastal Path and headed out towards Elie Ness Lighthouse. There was nothing really catching my attention there so I carried on round to Lady’s Tower, an old stone edifice built in 1760 apparently as a changing room for Lady Anstruther who liked to bathe in the shelter of the rocks just below. It’s said that a bell would be rung to warn the locals to stay away while she was bathing.

The evening sun was getting a little lower in the sky, casting a warm glow on the stone of the tower and the rocks below. I tried a few shots around the tower before setting up with ND filters to get some soft water effects as the sea washed over the rocks. At the time, I wasn’t all that convinced that I was getting shots I would be happy with, but opening them up in Lightroom and doing some editing got better results than I had expected. I was by that time, however, thinking that my blog post would be about a forlon trip when nothing really presented itself as a pleasing image that would be “a keeper”. And that happens – often. Just like fishermen, photographers come home with tales of the one that got away, or the one that actually never was.

I was preparing to settle for this just being a nice time out with the dog, taking some photos and enjoying the sea air on a pleasant summer evening – not a bad outcome – and was thinking about stopping by a bench to pack my camera away when I spotted this….

sunset grasses

This is actually the last of three shots that I took of this scene. What immediately attracted me was the warm glow of the sun which was casting a more diffused light having been partially obscured by clouds. It was the beautiful golden light that was capturing my imagination.

Shot 1 – was very bog standard – wide, capturing the whole scene and very much the typical sunset type of photograph. It was my shot in the can, if you like; something to have that could probably be worked on a little in post.

Shot 2 – was cropped in a little, by zooming to a longer focal length and focused on the background. I felt that was a better composition. With landscapes, it’s easy to stay with the grand vista, but there is often great merit in homing in on a specific feature, or aspect of the scene.

Shot 3 – the one above. This time I decided to keep the same basic framing as shot 2 but this time to focus on the grasses in the foreground and throw the wider “grand vista” out of focus. I’m pleased with it as the grasses make for a good point of interest, provide a leading line and frame the highlight on the water.

All of the processing was done in Lightroom with the intention of using as light a touch as possible, which consisted of a slight warming of the colour temperature and some minimal and local highlight dampening.

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This photograph is available to buy as a print from my website.  Sales allow me to keep doing what I do.

Be inspired and keep those shutters firing.

Focus folly

two men and a doorway

Here’s a curious one, which I’m calling a focus folly.

I was in St Andrews to get some photos of their St Andrews Day celebrations, but mainly the fireworks. Walking along the street my attention was taken by these two chaps standing in a doorway having a smoke. My line of sight was across the rooftop of a parked car and the way the light was falling on the raindrops intrigued me as a foreground. I had no time to set up a tripod so getting anything here was reliant on being quick and hand-held with a fast enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake. This meant a high ISO of 10000 and the inevitable grain that would go with it. I quickly chose my composition and, using an aperture of f5.6 took two shots – one with the foreground droplets as the focal point and a second with the two men as the focal point. At this time I had no idea what I might end up doing with the shots, if anything.

Getting the shots on screen I really liked the way the foreground raindrops worked with the deep bokeh of the background. The trouble was, that this meant the two men were also out of focus and they really made sense as the subject of the photo. I did, however, have a second image in which they were in focus. At which point I was straight into Photoshop and working with layers and a mask to produce the end result we have here.

Why am I calling this a focus folly? Simply because this is a manufactured effect but I think it works with the foreground leading you directly to the main subject without all the other background distractions.

Now, after all of that, did I get any shots of the fireworks? I certainly did….

Colour and light

Here are a couple of different shots from today’s efforts.

This avenue of trees really captured my attention in Riverside Park at Glenrothes. The carpet of fallen leaves provided a pleasing colour base for the overhanging palette of the branches. The softness is offset by the sturdy verticals of the trunks. The challenge lies with the bright area where the daylight threatened to burn out any detail. As always I shot this in raw and made a manual exposure compromise in an effort to balance the whole image. As I’m away from base with no access to Lightroom or Photoshop, I adjusted this locally to take the highlights down a little.  I’m fairly happy with the result but will look again back at base.

1/25sec at f5.6 ISO 200

This next shot, in St Andrews, got my attention for different reasons.

The mottled shadows of a tree falling on the side of this church were making a pattern that just appealed to me. Light is so important in photography and this shot illustrates one way of using light to reveal textures that are not actually there. The shadows create a softening effect on the hard wall, creating a contrast in texture. The only processing on this shot is a slight crop to improve the overall composition.

2/200sec at f5.6 ISO 200

Light and time

cast colours

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.  John Berger

 

Light and time are ever present, yet also fleeting, passing and constantly changing. As John Berger says, they are the essential raw materials of photography. As the shutter opens and closes the light present at that moment in time is captured and recorded.

Both concepts of light and time speak to me in this photograph taken in Gloucester Cathedral. The direct light of a low February sun was shining through the stained glass windows casting this collage of colour onto the stone pillars of the Cathedral. I was drawn much more to this casting of light than I was to the window itself. The pillars provide a sense of permanence, stability and strength, almost challenging time itself. In contrast, the cast of colours suggest the fleeting nature of light washing lightly and gently over the hardness of stone. Those particular patterns might never appear again in exactly the same way and the magic of photography lies in capturing this moment of interaction between light and time.

I’ll probably keep coming back to this image as it’s just one of those that I can look at time after time and be inspired to different thoughts and emotions.

The photo was shot on a Canon EOS 70D at 1/40 sec with an aperture of f8 at ISO 800. The focal length was 29mm. It was shot in portrait format and I made slight adjustments to tone and colour in Lightroom as well as cropping for composition.