Under my feet all along

I went out on a crisp morning to capture some of the Autumnal colours before everything turns more grey. The sun shone but there was precious little in a copse near to the house that made for an interesting shot..... It should have been great... a babbling brook, lots of trees, but little in the way of mist or anything to soften the sharp, low sun.

I was trudging slowly back when something at my feet caught my eye. It was some bright green moss sitting in the leaves and dead wood. The sun was catching the edge. Because of the brightness I could hand hold and get some really sharp shots of the riot of shapes.

I always shoot in RAW which gives huge detail. So when I got home I cropped the print fairly hard on a detail, in the end only hinting at the moss because the subtle shades of the dead leaves were so attractive. Here is the finished product:

Shooting at night ….. Problems!

Susie has been getting involved more and more on the committee of a Local Arts Centre. She accepted the commission to do her thing with Christmas lights, even if they were restricted to only being viewed from outside.

She happily asked me to shoot some pictures at night for publicity etc. I blithely agreed and rocked up with the tripod etc. after the sun had a set a couple of nights ago….. I gradually realised that there were some issues…. Some were predictable. Tungsten light turned everything orange, that could be reset without a problem after the event, but the layout of the building meant that I had to shoot the trees in the window from outside and below. This meant that the background for each shot was a series of hideous florescent light fittings…..

Added to that, one of the other members had agreed to come out and unlock the building so he stood looking chilly while I realised that I didn’t have a huge amount of time for the exercise.

Metering was a nightmare. Anyway, I shot pictures of everything I could without too much consideration other than exposure and getting the shots as sharp as possible.

I got the shots and they were not great….. especially tricky were the trees in the window. As predicted they were lost because immediately behind were the strip lights…. I exposed for the baubles on the tree and hoped I could sort things out at home….

Back at the ranch I removed some extraneous odds and sods and sorted the orange glow then set to work painstakingly removing the strip lights from the image….. it took a couple of hours but in the end this…. Before and after… which is an amateurish attempt, but at least Susie’s hard work can been seen now.....

Saved by the sky (and James)

Out for (Yet another) lockdown walk, this time to Newport Pagnell, with the camera. We had a lovely stroll down by the river, but the late Autumn colours had virtually gone and there was little else to capture. However, thankfully the sky came to the rescue. I decided to try and make a feature of the rather featureless skyline and drop it down to the very bottom of the image and leave it practically silhouetted there. There were lots af great clouds of differing types. This was the outcome.

(Cont)

Although I was quite happy with this one there was little else to shoot until we got back into town and went for a cup of coffee at Costa.

The local churchyard had some benches so we sat down.... with the last shot of the day I took this one of James with his "I don't want you to take one of me" look, while Susie looks enigmatic behind the shades and coffee cup. To make it a little more journalistic I turned into Black and White and turned up the contrast..... I like this.