The moors near where I live can be a rather bleak and unforgiving place. It’s not really a landscape that attracts photographers and you don’t often if ever see images of it in magazines. Despite this I often walk in the area with my camera so on the odd occasion that an image looks even half good it makes me happy. Here is one such recent image captured on my Sony RX10. I love the colourful golden grass in this scene and the way the contours of the land snake off into the distance.
I hope you like it and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
I like this photograph. It brings back happy memories of the Pennine Way. You have captured the atmosphere of the place and the colours are splendid. I think that the simple compositions often work best; so often we try to cram too much in.
Thanks and great that it brings back happy memories of the Pennine Way. I walk the area regularly and you get a real sense of isolation at times.
I quite agree. I also like your use of the tower. It really seems to provide balance and destination point in your composition. Nicely done. 🙂
Thank you. I also like the tower. It’s often the most photogenic thing around.
Funny how we focus differently. I didn’t see the tower, but liked the use of ridge and fence line to draw ones focus.
It was actually the ridge and fence that caught my eye. It was only once I had shot the first frame and checked it that I noticed the tower and had to a move a little to get the placement right.
Nice shot. I often run round there; lots of friends and relatives in uppermill, greenfield …
Perhaps we have passed each other without realising. I am over in Dobcross.
A very enjoyable picture. The area may not be to everyone’s taste but I found it very evocative. Some more like this would be much appreciated.
Thank you. I will see what I can do although shots like this one are quite rare.
A very simple but nice landscape picture done by a man with talent and an eye for a photo. I am following your blog with interest and learning all the time
Thenk you very much. Great also that your enjoying the blog.
There is an important lesson to be considered here and one that plagues many photographers who don’t travel to exotic places. How can one photograph what many of us consider mundane or rather boring places? However, with an eye to interesting shapes, textures, colors, foregrounds, vanishing lines, juxtapositions, et cetera, one can find excellent subjects and with good technique, that involves a little thinking, one can succeed in making art out of the mundane. This is a good example and one that enforces the reason to always carry a good small camera.
Thanks John. It’s true you can find pleasing images in most locations it’s just with some you need to work a little harder than others and you also need the weather to play ball.. Good point about always trying to carry a good small camera. I do make that a habit and see it as an essential part of my walking gear.
Wonderful photo. I like the contrast of old and new with the moor contrasted with the tower on the horizon. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you. I hadn’t thought about the contrast before but its a good point. There is also the contrast of nature with manmade.
Nice photo, skilful composition & balance (which in my humble opinion needs both the fence and the tower). I wonder whether it is as it came out of the RX10, or whether – and if yes how heavily – it was photoshopped, nik-ked or whatever?
The honest answer is no it isn’t as it came out of the RX10 but possibly not for the reasons I think your hinting at. The reason I say this is because I shoot in RAW format and use the technique of exposing to the right. In this instance I have also used a 2 stop ND grad on the camera so together these techniques make for a very “overexposed” image which looks washed out. In the RAW conversion process I then reduce the exposure and increase the contrast which will also have the effect of boosting saturation. I did to a little bit of shadow lifting in Nik Viveza and adding some subtle warming to the grass but not as much as you might think. The colours from the RX10 are superb as I have remarked on in the past. The composition is certainly as shot and not cropped although I did clone out a patch of mud from the lower left of the frame which was very distracting.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for taking the time for this thorough, very interesting and instructive response!
I would like to learn more about what you call “exposing to the right”; can you point me to a blog entry or ebook where you explain the why and how in more detail?
Maybe you can help me with another related question:
After going back and forth between JPG, RAW and RAW+JPG a few times I am presently shooting in RAW and I am experimenting with Adobe Camera Raw, Aperture, Silkypix and Capture One 8 to do the RAW conversion. However, when the exposure is right, I find the in-camera conversion of my Fujifilm X-T1, and even that of my often belittled Canon 100D hard to beat.
Does that mean that I still have a lot to learn about using a RAW Converter, or is that something you experience as well (when you don’t “expose to the right”, which obviously changes the equation)?
Thank you in advance!
I haven’t blogged about the technique of exposing to the right. I did cover it in my book ” How to Avoid and Remove Image Noise with Nik Dfine 2″ as it’s a good technique to help avoid noise as well as capture finer details in the images. But don’t go buying the book just for that as it’s not worth it’s not worth it. I will try to work up a fact sheet about this approach as it is very valuable and quite simple when you get the hang of it. The trick though is in correcting the exposure as part of the RAW conversion.
If you get the exposure right then your in camera JPEGs will look good. If all you are going to do with them is view them at low resolution on a computer screen then you wouldn’t notice too much difference between the JPEG and a RAW conversion other than perhaps slightly more detail in the shadow area and perhaps improved colour rendition. But it does take experience in RAW processing to bring out the best in the image. Where Exposing to the Right and RAW conversion will beat the in camera JPEG is if you want to print the images at perhaps A3 or larger. You can retain much more control over the fine details and the shadow details when working with RAW. Most in camera JPEG conversions will pretty much destroy the fine detail with their noise reduction (although many cameras allow you some control over this).
Hope this helps and watch out for the fact sheet or blog posting.