Ladybower Reservoir, Peak District. Fuji X-T3, Fuji 55-200mm lens, ISO160, 1/20″ at f/13.0. Kase 0.9 ND Grad (soft) filter on the sky. Tripod mounted.
It’s been a good year for shooting in the Peak District. If
I look back a few years, I almost never ventured into the Peaks. Instead, I
preferred to make a 2 hour drive up the motorway to the Lake District. These
days I would much rather drive 45 minutes to locations like this. Ladybower reservoir.
My original intention in visiting this spot was to shoot the
heather in the evening sun. But as the sun became lower the light on the
distant water and hillside caught my attention. I couldn’t resist popping the 55-200
lens on the Fuji X-T3 and taking a shot.
Peak District Processing Miniseries
If you haven’t already watched these, I’ve now produced two sets
of videos demonstrating my photo editing workflow. Both use images shot in the
Peak District and I’ve now posted these to my website in short articles.
Curbar Edge after sunset, Peak District. Fuji X-T3, Samyang 12mm lens, ISO160, 2.1″ at f/8.0. 0.9 Soft ND Grad filter and tripod.
It’s Friday again and I’ve spent the entire week trying to layout
the print version of my latest book. The desktop publishing software I’m using launched
only recently and I’m hitting quite a few bugs. Given how frustrating this is I
decided to stop to share an image instead.
I shot this last weekend at Curbar Edge in the Peak District
and there are a few points I want to highlight:
This is around 15 minutes after sunset, which is fast becoming my favourite time. The bright white dot in the sky is the moon. There’s something very nice about the light after sunset.
The sun set immediately behind me which dramatically reduced the dynamic range of the scene. Even then I used a 0.9 (3 stop) Soft ND Grad filter on the sky.
The heather in the scene looks great but it’s dead. The reason it appears pink is because of the magenta colour of the light. That’s what happens shortly after sunset when you place the sun behind you.
The key takeaway for me from this image is that it pays to
understand how light changes depending on the time of day and angle. It would
have been all too easy to have stopped shooting after sunset, or even have
faced the wrong direction.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
I did think about using the image above as the Friday image but
decided not to. I cover the above image in the video and wanted to include a
different image here.
Peak District hillside. Fuji X-T3 and 55-200 lens. Click the image to enlarge.
This is from a recent trip to the Peak District. I captured it
around 40 minutes before sunset when the sun was low and the light warm. What I
like, besides the lovely warm light is the contrast between the “colder”
background hill and the “warmer” foreground. It’s also nice the way the solitary
barn in the field acts as a focal point.
In terms of technicalities, I was using the Fuji X-T3 with
the Fuji 55-200 lens set to 86mm. The camera was set to ISO160 which gave a
shutter speed 1/17” at f/13. I could probably have used a wider aperture than
f/13 but I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time. I was more interested
in capturing the light before I lost it. I could see the sun heading for a bank
of hazy cloud on the horizon which damage the crisp direct light you see here.
I mounted the camera on a tripod because the shutter speed
was slow, and I didn’t use any filters. I was shooting at around 90 degrees
from the sun and the shaded hillside wasn’t dark enough to require I use a
filter.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
The Hope Valley, Peak District. Fuji X-T3, Fuji 55-200, ISO160, 1/180″ at f/11.0. Tripod mounted.
Today I’m happy. My latest book “Essential Adobe Photoshop CC” is available on Amazon. It’s the longest book I’ve created by some way and I’ve been writing it for the past 6 months. That’s quite a project.
It’s written for people who are either new to or struggle with Photoshop. It’s priced at £6.49, $7.49 or similar in other currencies. You can use the link http://viewbook.at/amazon-photoshop-cc to view the book on the Amazon website for your country and download a sample.
Now I’m working on the print version and furiously trying to
learn my new publishing software. I’ve decided the popularity of my print books
requires an improved layout and design. That means new and unfortunately much
more complex software. It will be worth it though.
Friday Image No.227
I love a good atmospheric black and white image, but I often
think of bad weather producing the best results. But in this example, the
weather was glorious and sunny rather than cloudy and raining. I think this
conversion to black and white using Nik Silver Efex Pro has worked well.
For anyone familiar with the Peak District, you’ll probably
recognise the scene. This is the cement works in the Hope Valley. I shot the
image earlier in the evening on the same day as last week’s heather photo. At that
time the sun was still quite high in a clear blue sky. Fortunately, a lot of
atmospheric haze has saved the shot.
I captured the image with a Fuji X-T3 and Fuji 55-200 lens at
full reach. At f/11 and ISO160 I had a shutter speed of 1/180”. Although this
is fast, I still mounted the camera on a tripod and used a cable release. I
wanted to be sure I would avoid the risk of camera shake.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
Last week I mentioned that I had published the first two videos in a new mini-series. This week I recorded and published the remaining two. If you haven’t seen these, they explain and demonstrate my simplified four-stage workflows for editing landscape photos:
If you have suggestions for tools to include in future mini-series,
please add a comment to the videos.
Friday Image No.226
Near to Surprise View in the Peak District National Park. Fuji X-T3, Fuji 16-55 at 17mm. ISO160, 5″ at f/11.0. 0.6 (2 stop) ND graduated filter. Tripod mounted.
Last weekend was excellent weather for photography. Unfortunately, I wasn’t out taking photos but rather attending a drystone walling course. Thanks to our efforts one of the local farmers now has a new 70’ stone wall and I have a new hobby (along with learning to play Bluegrass Banjo).
So instead of a very different image, this is another shot
of the heather. I shot this a couple of days after the photo from last week.
As with the previous photo I shared, I shot this around
10-15 minutes after the sun had set. Notice how the heather seems to glow with
the diffused, soft light. Despite this, I still had to use a 2 stop ND grad on
the sky to try to balance the exposure. There’s also some nice movement in the
heather and grass which has helped to soften it.
When I came to process the image, I also had a few problems. To create the best exposure that I could, but retain the feel of the image, I had to create three separate exposure from the RAW file. I then blended these (in selected areas) using Luminosity Blending techniques. After that, the processing was like that demonstrated in the video mini-series.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
It’s Friday again and I’ve managed two days photography this
week. The reason, besides the weather not being too bad, is that the heather is
out.
Both shoots were in the afternoon and both in the Peak
District. The first was Bamford Edge where I captured this shot. The other was
near to Surprise View, but you will need to wait to see those images.
Before I explain a little about how I captured this image I
should mention the accompanying video.
Landscape Photo Editing Workflow – The Miniseries
With my latest book in proofreading, I decided to take advantage and publish a video showing my editing workflow. To do this I used another image from the same evening shoot as this one. But rather than publish a long video which may be hard to watch, I’ve broken it into a small series.
There will be four videos in total:
Assessing the image.
RAW Processing
Nik Processing
Special Effects
I’ve already released the first two and I’m planning to do
the other two next week.
I shot the image for this post around 5-10 minutes after sunset and up until this point, I had been struggling. Because we were facing towards the sun and the contrast was high, most of my shots had a harsh look that I didn’t like. It was only once the sun had set below the horizon that I was able to capture the dynamic range and open the shadows. Even then I needed to use a graduated ND filter (0.9 Soft) on the sky.
Another advantage of waiting until after sunset (besides
lowering the contrast range) is that the heather glows and comes to life. This isn’t
always the case, but if you are facing towards the stronger light, it works
well. Turn away from the light and the heather looks grey and lifeless.
In terms of the shot, this is a single image captured using
RAW on the Fuji X-T3. I used a 0.9 Soft Kase Grad filter as mentioned. I also
had the camera mounted on a tripod and used a cable release. The image I used
for the video is like this one and I used the same approach if you want to know
more.
I hope you like the image and videos and have a great
weekend.
Wheat field near Lands End, Cornwall. Fuji X-T3 with 18-135mm lens.
I won’t say very much about this image except that it reminds
me of summer. I shot it whilst on a walk near Lands End during my recent
holiday to Cornwall. I spent around 30 minutes in this field (on the path of
course) and it was amazing. Crouching down low I was able to focus near to me
to ensure the wheat was in focus, but the distant hills were blurred. I also
tried to line the path up to point towards the cows on the hill but trying not
to make it obvious. I will need to look through the other shots I took as there
are a few that look promising.
This is a straight shot with the Fuji X-T3 and Fuji 18-135mm lens. Handheld and no filters. It just makes me feel happy.
