Standing in the Rain

A couple of weeks back my good friend G mentioned a plan he had to spend a day making photographs along the North Wales coast; specifically with the aim of experimenting some more with long exposures using his Big Stopper filter. This seemed like such a good idea to me I asked if I could tag along; a request he generously agreed to. I say generously because to do so was quite likely to put the mockers on his plans - you see, we have an almost unblemished record of awful weather when we go on a photographic expedition together. It looked to be fitting then when the forecast for last Friday looked to be a rainy full stop to a week of unbroken, bright, dry, cold weather. However, we were committed and reasoned that the kind of photography we had in mind might actually be helped by overcast conditions.

We decided to head for our farthest point, Llandudno, and work our way back but, sadly, the forecast was right and the morning was very wet. Undeterred, we stoically headed for Costa where we spent some time in a deep, philosophical discussion about photography over a cappuccino and an over sized custard cream each (at least, that's how I remember the conversation). The rain continued but was forecast to ease off at midday so we made our way to the end of the pier where we split up; G took the high road up towards Happy Valley for a view down to the pier while I took the low road, down the steps to the shore which was already covered by the rising tide.

I stood there for quite some time waiting for the promised passing of the rain, even getting my camera out to size up compositions before quickly putting it away again. The rain got so heavy I even put the waterproof cover on my camera bag. After about 45 minutes, it did start to ease and I was able to set up my camera using an old rucsac cover I carry around as a cover to work under. Even so, I got rain drops on the filter which had to be cloned out of the final image (above). This first picture was made while still raining. It is a 30 second exposure and was taken with one of my Mamiya lenses on the D800 (because I could, ok!). It's quite nice and very serene but G got a better one from where he was.

As the rain did start to clear away, the effects of a 30 minute exposure began to create a more dynamic feel.


 
When we had done with the pier, we drove down the coast road, essentially, just looking for anything else that took our fancy. A brief stop was made at Rhos where the derelict pier caught our eye. Unfortunately, there was a lot of work going on surrounding the pier and we couldn't really get close enough to make much of it.

So, off to the next stop at Llandullas where G wanted to investigate a pier used for loading ships with stone from the nearby quarry. A ship was moored when we got there so we ate lunch and then killed some time photographing other things while waiting to see if it left (we assumed it had to leave fairly soon as, by now, the tide had turned). G concentrated on more long exposures using some groynes as his focal point while I entertained myself with the textures of the rotting sea defences.

We then made our way over to the pier but discovered there was no very obvious composition, particularly with the ship still moored to it. It may be worth another visit but we couldn't be bothered going back when we saw the ship pull away as we walked back to the car.

Our final stop for the day was Talacre and the Point of Ayr lighthouse. By now the tide was well out so the long exposure work was over but there was the promise of some nice light if the big dark cloud would just head away from us. Sadly, it didn't. It came right at us and a downpour of hail and then rain forced us back to the shelter of the car. I just managed one last effort before it arrived; the patterns in this weathered stone were fascinating. This is the best of several exposures I made.

Although we did get wet as usual, it was by no means a wash out. Some useful experimentation, a couple of pleasing photographs and, most of all, excellent company. That's a good way to spend a day!

Wirral Art & Photography Exhibition 2013

Good news in the post yesterday (a rare event) - I discovered that not only has my picture been accepted to the annual Wirral Art &Photography Exhibition, it has also been chosen as the prize winner in the photography category.

The print is one of the stitched panoramas I made during our trip to the Trossachs last October. This was dawn on the first morning of the holiday and, although there was plenty of cloud around, the muted colours and stillness of Loch Achray made for a beautiful and tranquil scene. This was the first panorama I had attempted with the D800 and stitching five images from 36 mp camera certainly made my computer work hard - I am sure I smelt the CPUs burning. The result was an incredibly detailed, huge file which I just had to see printed big. The trouble is, what can you do with a large print; unprotected, it would only get damaged so I decided it had to be mounted and framed. Sheila Gee at Cheshire Frames kindly did a wonderful job of framing this and another picture for me a very short notice so that I could submit them to the exhibition only for me to discover that this year there is a maximum of one entry per category. A choice had to be made and I chose this image, mainly because there was no room for it on our walls. I'm very glad I did now.

The exhibition runs from 23rd March to 5th May at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead.


Prints available from my website : www.landscapeandlight.co.uk

Featured Photograph for March

The photograph I have chosen for this month is not new but has been recently 're-worked' - I will explain more later. Despite having been made a few years ago, it remains one of my personal favourites; partly because it is a beautiful scene but also because this is my spiritual home - the Lake District and, specifically, the area around Keswick. I genuinely feel my spirit soar as I near the northern Lakes. This, then, is one of my favourite viewpoints; the top of Walla Crag offers such superb views for such modest effort that it it would be mad to overlook it.

On this morning, the forecast for cold, clear weather promised much and I was not disappointed. I had Walla Crag all to myself for a couple of hours and enjoyed the most peaceful time watching the mist burn away as the sun grew in strength. I then had the enormous, if slightly mean, pleasure of meeting another photographer on his way up as I headed down, aware of what he had missed out on by having his breakfast beforehand (if you tell me you wouldn't get some pleasure from that, I don't believe you).

The photograph was taken on Velvia 50 film using my Mamiya Pro TL and has only been printed once, direct from transparency. Until a couple of days ago, I thought that I had lost the transparency but I eventually found it (I really need to sort out my storage system) and decided to get a high resolution scan before I misplaced it again. The beauty of having a decent digitised version is that I have been able to lighten the fells a little - something I was unable to do with scans from my own flatbed. This now better resembles the original.

There is one other thing that makes this picture special to me: It won the Wainwright Society Photographic Competition a few years back. Now I don't kid myself that this competition had a huge entry but the judge was one of my photography 'heros', Derry Brabbs. Derry produced the photographs for all but one of the 'coffee table' Wainwright books and was instrumental in kick starting my passion for landscape photography as well as inspiring me to my first ever, very modest, published work. The knowledge that he liked this enough to select it as his winner is a source of great satisfaction.


Prints available from my website : www.landscapeandlight.co.uk

Love Is .......

I could start by saying that 'love is' my new camera (the wonderful little Fujifilm XE-1) but that's likely to get me in trouble and, besides, is a subject for another blog. What I will say about the camera here is that it is genuinely small enough and light enough to take anywhere - including on shopping trips.

Street photography is a new departure for me and I'm sure many opportunities for good photographs pass me by either because I don't see them, am not quick enough or too cowardly. However, it would have been hard even for me to miss these giant, heart shaped balloons in Liverpool One and fail to see the potential.

While the women were in Zara, I positioned myself with the viewpoint below. The hope was that I would get an affectionate couple in just the right position on the escalator but it was always going to be a long shot. The two pictures below are the closest I got despite standing there for quite some time. There were too many factors I couldn't control even when I got a suitable subject in my sights; crowded escalator, too many people in front of me, prominent coloured clothing and people stopping to have a fag as they come out of the shop. How I longed to have my eldest daughter and her boyfriend with me - they love being photographed, make a good looking couple and I could have orchestrated their movements. I know that's not exactly in the spirit of street photography but I can't help thinking it would have made for a great image.

Eventually, I had to accept that it wasn't going to happen and, as it was primarily a shopping trip and there were others with me, I gave up and moved on. The women wanted to go into a shop on the upper level next so that did give me another opportunity and this time I struck lucky, getting a perfect couple, holding hands walking into the frame - she even had a red coat on. Selective colour is not a technique I use very often, it's a little 'gimmicky' for me but, in this instance, I felt it was crying out for such a treatment to put all the emphasis on the main subjects. Too much? Possibly. I will let you decide.

Finally, without moving, I looked up and saw another take on the 'one' theme. This time, I have simply desaturated everything except the reds. Looking at it from a male bias, I would have preferred to have had an attractive women standing alone on the walkway but it wasn't to be.

One thing I am sure of is that I would have attracted a lot more attention and possibly bothered people had I been standing there with a great big DSLR and lens. With the discrete little, retro looking 'rangefinder', barely anyone paid any attention to me.

Featured Photograph for February

I have never found February to be a good month for photography; in fact, I would not be remotely surprised if I've taken fewer photographs in this month than any other. So, although I did consider a few genuine February photographs for this feature, I ultimately decided to go for one from January - January 2012 to be precise. Most of the photographs I tend to feature have involved some degree of planning but this was a truly opportunist effort. I was taking my eldest daughter back to Aberyswyth University and was passing Bala when I noticed the mist rising from the lake. Fortunately, I pretty much always carry a camera and tripod with me in the car and knew a good place to stop. Twenty minutes or so later, I had what I wanted and we were back on the road.

Now, many photo society judges could be relied upon to criticise any landscape photograph in which the horizon has been placed in the centre of the frame and it is true that, compositionally, it often isn't the most effective thing to do. However, on this occasion I was immediately intrigued by the idea that the scene resembled a sound wave and that was the effect I wanted to capture. I've allowed slightly more room at the top of the frame in an effort to avoid splitting the image exactly in half but I felt it was important to retain the symmetry and simplicity.

I hope you like it.


Prints available from my website : www.landscapeandlight.co.uk

Stopping Time - Part 2

Back in November I wrote about using my Lee Big Stopper neutral density filter for the first time. I was in Scotland at the time and tried it out at dawn, the low light resulting in a 16 minute exposure. Although the outcome was very pleasing, it was clear that a scene with more movement in it would probably make for more dramatic effects. It was December before I was able to put this to the test. Following an enjoyable morning in Snowdonia, I headed over to Anglesey and Penmon point having first consulted the tide tables to establish that the tide would be on the way in towards sunset.

It was mid afternoon when I arrived so the light was much brighter than my previous dawn effort. The image above was made with a 30 second exposure but even at that speed you can clearly see the effect, with the sea being slightly smoothed out and movement evident in the clouds.

The next two images were made with a 60 second exposure and the smoothing effect is more pronounced. The nice thing about the scene above is that this has meant that some of the colour from the cloud is reflected on the surface of the water - this would be less visible if the photograph had been taken at a more 'normal' shutter speed.

The more intimate scene below shows the misty effect you can get. It is also worth noting that the filter does create a blue cast which was very pronounced on this particular image. Of course, it is easily corrected by tweaking the colour temperature but, in some cases, the blue cast may be preferable.

In the picture below, we are up to 90 seconds exposure and another warning: I was watching the water getting closer and closer while I waited for the exposure to be completed. I was fairly comfortable on this occasion but it did occur to me that, had I been working with an exposure of 8 minutes or more, my equipment might have been in peril (I was wearing wellies).

Finally, below, one of the last exposures I made (I decided the prospects for sunset were poor and packed up to head home - fortunately, I was right). This is 120 seconds and, although subtle, you can see a difference to the picture above; there is slightly less definition in the surface of the sea. This raises a point - if you compose a photograph with a large expanse of water and use too long an exposure, you run the risk of having a large featureless expanse in the picture. Here the rocks break that up to some extent.

In conclusion: Lots more practising to do yet but I am enjoying experimenting with the filter and like the options it gives me.

Featured Photograph for January

My featured photograph this month is from January 2010, the last time we had any sort of significant snowfall in these parts. It is a photograph of Helsby Hill although probably not a view many would recognise. I had to go off the beaten track for it and I think I like it all the more for it not being an obvious viewpoint. It also demonstrates the benefit of going out while it is still snowing; by the time I reached this spot, the snow had only just stopped and the clouds were beginning to break up. Much later and, not only would the sky have been far less interesting, the direct sunlight would have made the scene much harder to photograph.

I do hope we get some of the white stuff this winter but the signs are not great at the moment so, for now, I have only the photographs and the memories they stimulate.

Prints available from my website: www.landscapeandlight.co.uk