300

I'm just putting a storybook album together for a recent golden wedding celebration I covered when I decided to post this shot we took just before the guests arrived, I say we as this shot was actually the work of my assistant, I take credit for telling her the settings she needed but the actual composition was all hers.
I edited the shot in lightroom to give an effect similar to those typical of the film "300" which is high contrast and heavy use of vignetting, I think it's a great shot for an introduction for the album.

Merry Christmas Boxing Fans

Check out the date and time, I was up super early to open some presents but more importantly to edit some photos!These were some I took yesterday as an impromptu boxing match broke out after my nephew watched Rocky III, it wasn't the fairest of contests by any stretch of the imagination, I would estimate a weight difference of around 11 stone (154 Lbs) but the little one managed to tuck his opponent up with some lightning left jabs before unleashing his hammer right cross square to the jaw. The second image showed how this electric fighter had the crowd in absolute pandemonium.
It seems in this contest of David and Goliath, David not only triumphed but Goliath ended up eating his Christmas pudding through a straw!

I would go into detail about how these shots were taken and processed but it is Christmas morning and I have a few errands to run, Merry Christmas.

Blea Tarn

It's been a while since my last post, the weather hasn't been the best for landscapes recently and this weekend was no exception. I went to the lake district to try and get some pictures of the Langdales and the surrounding area but there wasn't much break in the cloud cover so everything was a little flat. I did go to a nice owl sanctuary at Muncaster Castle and the ride over Wrynose and Hardnott passes heading towards Wast water is not to be missed. There are plenty of locations just a few minutes walk from the road in the central lakes, this is Blea Tarn with great langdale in the distance. I was doing quite a few long exposures with a 3 stop ND filter to get the water to have that milky look. This was taken at f/16 for 30 seconds, 28mm at ISO100.

Goldfinger Girl

I'm putting this one up as I have a nude assignment coming up so I had to brush up on my techniques. The reluctant model needed a little persuading to let me put this photo up but it's tastefully done and thought it would be good for illustrating the technique, she agreed. This was taken on full manual mode at ISO100 1/200 sec f/8 at 48mm.

This was shot in a studio with a light either side of her but you can use any photo with a bit of variation in the shadows. As with most fine art nudes the photo was taken in colour but converted to black and white during processing. The effect used to get the shiny metallic look on the skin is called the Sabatier effect. Good old wiki has an entry about it here. As with a lot of old school techniques this can be replicated digitally but also is easy to over cook and time should be taken to get the effect just right.
Once you have your desaturated (B&W) photo add a curves adjustment layer in photoshop. A box will appear with a line running from the bottom left to top right. To the left of this there is a pencil, click this to draw your own curve, then starting at the top left of the box draw a smooth W shape. This will undoubtedly give you a very odd looking photo, if you then click on the points adjuster (icon next to the pencil on the left) you can then move the curve at each point, I remove a few points here by dragging them out of the window, you only need 5 or 6. Then it is a case of adjusting them until you get the desired effect. I'll repeat this can be very hit and miss but thats the beauty of digitally editing.

Retouching Portraits

I haven't added many portrait examples so here's one I was processing last night. The thing that struck me about this shot was the size of the girl's eyes and how the catch lights really add a sense of depth to them. I was also practising some air brushing techniques to make the skin really flawless, but still maintaining the dimple. There are thousands or retouching techniques out there but I'll give a quick run through of what I did.
Firstly I removed any obvious spots and marks, very quick using either the spot healer in photoshop or the spot remove tool in lightroom. The next part takes the longest, I use the healing brush, always on a new layer (ctrl J to duplicate the original layer) and sample from really clear bits of skin and repeatedly go over any blotchy parts. I then duplicate this layer and do some dodging in the eyes, on the whites and the irides (plural for iris apparently, I never knew that). Anyway after brightening the eyes a touch I then ran a surface blur filter (under filter, blur) with about 15 for radius and pixels, the result of this will look very odd so you must then reduce the opacity of that blurred layer to get back the detail in from the layer below. To selectivity sharpen areas ie the eyes and the lips just add a layer mask and paint in black (or grey) over the parts you don't need smoothing out. That's pretty much it for retouching, the key is usually less is more, you can always measure your progress by alt clicking on the eye next to the background layer this will reveal your original photo only.

Running a Bath

This was just a quick abstract I took last night whilst the bath was running, I've manipulated the colours in lightroom and added a radial gradient in photoshop, thats the greenish curve. It was all fairly experimental, but I was in a bathroom with no windows!

Whitby Boat

It's been a while since my last post so I'll try to get back on track with some shots from the east coast. This one was taken in the small harbour village of Staithes, about 5 minutes north of Whitby. It was a fairly overcast day and I had done a lot of landscapes that morning so I was more concentrating on shots with no horizons in them. As the tide was way out I got near the boats to try and get some detailed shots, the lighting is not the most dramatic so I added a vignette in photoshop and pushed up the reds slightly. The exif info shows how low the light was, ISO 800, f2.8 1/60 sec at 24mm. As I'd been lugging the tripod round all morning I'd left it in the car so the aperture had to be wide open and the ISO quite high to get a decent shutter speed to handhold, I get nervous with anything under 1/50, although I read about a guy who claims to be able to handhold at 1/10 in a helicopter and still get sharp photos! Anyway in this instance I think the wide aperture just nicely blurs the top and bottom of the shot.

Un Disastro de Electricidad

This is a photograph of one of those plasma lamps that, without being overly technical, use electricity. If interested you can learn all about them here. They make great photographic subjects and can edited to produce very abstract results. They are fairly easy to photograph however you do have to be on full manual and in a dark room. Shutter speeds can run to many seconds but this gives a very different result to the one seen here. This image was exposed for 0.6 sec at f/8.0 at ISO400. The shutter was about as slow as I could go to keep the beams defined. You can get a wide range of results, just keep reviewing them after changing any settings.

Fountains Abbey

This was taken at fountains abbey in North Yorkshire. There was a bit of a druid gathering going on (or people on a druid experience, whatever one of those is) you can just see them at the bottom of the frame but as the shutter speed was 13 seconds they are very blurred but it gave me an idea about processing this to try and get a mystic effect. It's basically another split toning image with the shadows set to blue and the highlights to green. I also added a slight diffuse glow in photoshop along with a little dodging and burning on the roof.
The exif data for this one was ISO 100, f/11 for 13 sec at 27mm, I am starting to look at ultra wide lenses now (10-22mm range) as this would have helped for the great interiors (and exteriors) at fountains abbey.

Altertates to Fireworks & Bonfires

I was going to put a tutorial on how to shoot fireworks but there really are thousands on the web, which all say put camera on manual focus and focus to infinity, ISO to 100, set aperture between f8 & f11 and just vary your shutter speed between 1 and 10 seconds. Position the camera roughly where the rockets are exploding and you'll get some great shots especially if you an use a cable release. A good alternative to firework shots usually missed on bonfire night is the fire itself. As with fireworks you need to be in full manual mode but the aim is to get quick shutter speeds to try to freeze the fire, so you may need to up your ISO a little.

This is a shot I got last night, I thought it had quite a menacing quality. This was taken at f/6.3 for 1/250 sec at ISO 400. There are still a few more nights of reckless pyromania so get out and see what you can get.

Orange and Blue

We were up at fountains abbey near Rippon a few days ago when I got this shot of the beautiful autumn leaves against a crisp blue sky, this is pleasing to the eye because the colours used are complimentary, ie they are opposite each other on the colour wheel. It's always a good idea to look for complimentary colours when composing photographs and even better if you can isolate them.

To boost the saturation of the colours further I used a circular polarizing filter, you have to use a circular (as opposed to linear) polarizer with digital cameras, to technical to go into why. They screw in to the front of your lens any you just rotate them until you get the desired effect. CPL's really enhance the blues in skies and remove glare from water and generally work best at 90 degrees to the sun, I highly recommend them for landscape work.

Highlight Blending

As you can see I am still posting a few of the landscapes I took a few days ago, the weather hasn't been great recently so I have to play with older photos. This is a technique I used to merge a half colour, half black and white image on the basis of luminance values, I know that sounds a bit complex but it's a simple enough method. With this image I duplicated the layer and on the new layer I selected the highlights (ctrl+alt+tilde) tilde is the key above the tab key. I then applied this as a layer mask (this will look like a greyscale version of the layer). Nothing will change yet but if you then apply a black and white adjustment to the background layer only you should have an effect similar to this. You can always play around with the B&W sliders to get an effect you are happy with.

Ansel Adams Again

This was one from the same night as the previous post but from a different angle and obviously in black and white. This is another Ansel Adams type photo with the high contrast skies which really make the photo quite dramatic. The long shadows produced by the setting sun emphasise the mood, especially on the brickwork of the ruin. I had to dodge the middle right third slightly to get back some detail in the sky as it was betting a little too bright near the sun but other than that its just a case of changing the levels in the black and white adjustment layer (new in CS3) so the blue channel turns black.

Another Day, Another Silhouette

In an attempt to get another picture on the news I went and got this one this morning as I could see it was going to be a belting sunrise. This was taken in a field behind our house. I would have liked to get closer to the tree but the field was contained a few large bulls so I just put on a long lens. This was taken at f16 1/6 sec at 149mm, not a typical landscape focal length it has to be said. I also dialled in -0.3 exposure compensation to keep the land black.

Sandal Castle

I haven't posted in a few days so I thought I'd get back into it with a shot I'm pretty happy with. I was out with a friend taking pictures yesterday and I wasn't having a lot of success, we had originally gone for Autumn leaf type shots but everywhere was still green! I thought it might be a nice sunset so we went to Sandal Castle just outside Wakefield for some landscape photography and was lucky enough to get this shot. Lens flair is always a problem shooting into the sun, it can be reduced by attaching a lens hood and making sure your lens is dust free. I quite liked this sun burst effect so there was no need to edit it out. I also added a dark vignette at the corners. This was taken at f16, 1/30 sec, 31mm at iso 100.
EDIT: This shot was featured on our BBC regional news channel, look north and can be seen at their website here

8 Landscape Photography Tips

1. Location research.
Make sure you know where you are planning to shoot. Check maps for roads and/or footpaths. Also have an idea of where the sun will be (compasses are good for this). Some locations might be great for sunrises but poor for sunsets, and vice versa.
2. Weather.
It is always a good idea to check the weather to get an idea of what to expect and dress appropriately. There is a lot of luck involved with landscapes but it is better to get out and have a go even if the weather doesn’t look the best, no one ever shot a great landscape sitting at home.
3. Avoid “walk up” shots
Some shots can be taken straight away but you are better off if you have some time to assess a scene so you can get your composition right, it also gives you time to think about which filters to use. If you aim to be 30 minutes early you won’t be rushed to find the best viewpoint.
4. Pack all the Essentials
If possible, pack the night before. if you wake up early you are usually only half awake and can be forgetful, make a list for your bag if you must include: Camera and lenses, spare batteries (charged), filters (cleaned) along with any holders and adapters, memory cards and tripods. Remember to take suitable clothing along with maps, compass, snacks and even a torch.
5. Keep it Simple
It is tempting to try to include as much in a scene as you can but this can often make a picture too busy. Focus on what are the important elements and focus your attention on them.
6. Know the basics
Make sure you know how to use a piece of equipment before you take it out. Neutral density graduated filters are very important when getting exposure right in landscape photography and the golden hours during sunrise and sunset is no time to practice with them.
7. Take inspiration from your favourite Photos
Books, adverts and magazines are full of inspirational photographs, don’t try and copy them but try and figure out why you like them and remember it the next time you are out shooting.
8. Don’t quit
There are days when you put in a lot of preparation and come back with nothing, Sometimes the weather lets you down or the lighting isn’t the best. This happens to all photographers, don’t give up and remember the harder days make the times when you actually get the shot you are after even sweeter.

Old Industrial Photo

I was editing this photo for a pinhole camera effect but I decided to go a bit overboard with the alien skin exposure plugin and this was the result, I will put up a pinhole tutorial soon but this isn't it. I had to process the digital negative twice to bring out the sky as there wasn't much cloud detail to begin with then I just dodged the windows and burnt the clouds for a bit of added contrast. The was about 2 pixels of gaussian blur and a decent amount of vignetting to draw the eye in. This was shot at 17mm on my 350D at f4 for 1/640 (ISO 200) it was at the end of a walk and I didn't fancy getting my tripod out.

Adding a Professional Border in Photoshop

One of the simplest and most effective ways of presenting your photographs, be it on screen or printed out is to add a border, this gives a photograph a much more professional look. With photoshop this can be done in seconds and you can also record an action and apply it to as many images as you like. Here are 3 different border ideas for your photographs. Examples of these borders can be seen above. Before you start adding borders make sure you have flattened your image and the background layer is locked and active.

Black Mount – This is great for low key and monotone images or images that don’t quite fit a traditional white border, simple but effective. To Apply this border open the canvas size option under the image menu, make sure the relative colour box is ticked and select whit for the extension colour. Set the width and height to 0.1 inches and click OK. This will add a thin white border to the image. Now go back to the canvas size command and change the extension colour to back and enter 1.5 – 2 inches for both boxes and click OK.

Hairline Border – This is a good border for high key images (images with lots of lighter tones) as the white edges just get lost without some kind of border. For this technique go into the canvas size command and, with relative checked, set the extension colour to black and height and width to about 0.1 inches and click OK. You can also add a further 2 inches of white border to highlight the effect.

White Frame – This is a contemporary border that will really add that extra something to your photos. It uses the same technique as previous examples but you are adding 3 borders, the first is a 0.5 inch white canvas extension then a thin 0.1 inch black extension and to finish another 1.5 – 2 inch white extension. This adds a thin gap between the image and the border which makes the photograph stand out more. Note these canvas extensions can also be inverted to have black-white-black.

Autumn Leaves

This post is in celebration of my first posted article on a few article sites, I'll post the article here too as it is advice after all, this shot is a macro from last year but I'm going to get some better ones when the leaves start to turn this year. Anyway here's the article:

Leaves are a very popular subject when it comes to autumnal photography due to their great variation in colour at this time of year. If you are creative these subjects can offer great photographic potential. Here are 5 quick tips to make sure you make the most of the autumn weather

1. Ice – As the temperature drops outside leaves invariably become frozen in puddles, these can produce great photos. You can always pour cold water on the ice to remove the crystals and give it a really clear look, conversely you can scratch the surface to add some interest. If you can’t wait for the temperature to drop you can always stick some leaves in a water filled plastic container and freeze it overnight, just remember to fill your frame when you take the shot.
2. Falling leaves – As the leaves start to fall a rich carpet of yellows and reds starts to form. To get a sense of leaves falling without having to wait for a strong gust just ask an assistant to drop some whilst you snap away. Aim for a wide aperture to blur the background and go for shutter speeds of between ½ sec and 1/30 to get a sense of motion, you may need an overcast day or a neutral density filter as with the aperture wide open at this speed you may over expose during the day.
3. Soft focus – A quick, cheap way of adding a soft focus filter to your lens is adding a clear piece of plastic to the front of the lens (Clingfilm) and breathing on it, or on your UV filter if you have one. This will add a soft ethereal feel to your shots, just remember if you are breathing on your filters to give them a good clean after.
4. Back lighting – A great way to capture the vivid autumn colours is use the sun to back light them. This works great if you can shoot with a dark, shaded background. Remember if the back ground is dark the leaves may over expose so dial in a -1 stop to compensate and keep the darks dark and correctly expose the leaves. If the background is very bright you’ll have to add +1 stop to stop the leaves under exposing.
5. Get low, go wide – To really emphasise the coloured carpets so abundant in Autumn, fit a wide angle lens and get low down, focusing on a close leaf and fill the frame with the leaves going away into the distance, open spaces such as parks are great for this.

Wedding Photography

Another one of those shots to display my range, I've put this one up because I'm using it for a couple of wedding photography ads that I hope to put out and some more business cards for me to check when I forget my mobile number. I really like this one, it was done fairly late in the day, everyone was relaxed and the light was good. The Exif data is 140mm at f5.6 for 1/200 still at ISO 100. I'm sure all the enthusiasts know but just a reminder, a new version of photoshop lightroom (1.2) came out a week or so ago, you can get it here. Have a great weekend.

Paint with Light

This is a technique called painting with light where you leave the shutter open (bulb mode) on you camera and just use a light to set where you want to expose, the light in this example was just a little pen light but you can do the same sort of thing in fields at night with torches to illuminate say, rocks or trees. In this picture of my epiphone and amp I just opened the shutter and traced round the edges of each element, i.e. body, strings, amp etc. This created multiple exposures which I then combined in photoshop (I believe I set the blend mode to screen to keep only the lightest parts). A tripod is essential as neither the camera or the subject can move during any of the exposures and obviously the less ambient light entering the room the better.

Travel Photography

I was just looking through some old photos taken on a trip round the world and found this one I quite liked. This was in Cambodia when our bus broke down, or ran someone over, I can't remember. We were just sat on the side of the road watching traffic waiting for another bus when this wagon rolled along. I thought it converted to mono really well, my only regret was I didn't have an SLR at the time althought my old Canon Powershot A95 was the best.

Smoke

I was just clearing my lightroom database and I came across this one so I posted it, I haven't done one of these for a while, it's a really easy technique, I shot this at f11, 1/250 iso 200. I used an off camera flash to light it from the side. This is shot on a black background, just a piece of card should do it then all you need to do is invert the colours when you process it, ie black becomes white etc. Colour can be added as an overlay or by playing with your white balance settings and the hue/saturation layers. I also have a rainbow tinted smoke trail on my site from the same shoot as this.

Water Macro

It's raining far too heavily to take the camera out so here's one I took earlier off a car bonnet outside, I do have another version of this on my site but with a petal to add some interest to the scene. It was taken on my 50mm Sigma Macro lens at f8 for 1/2 a second I should have used a far higher aperture to make sure all the droplets were in focus. I added a gradient overlay in photo shop with the blend mode set to colour.

Wired

This was a picture of me after a day of product photography, I was a bit wired to say the least. In all seriousness though, if you get to go to Ponderosa, near Heckmondwike, I'd advise it, it's great for animal shots, if you have a mid telephoto lens and the subject is far enough from the bars you can blur them to the extent that they are barely noticeable.

Corn Field

This was a cornfield with Emley Moor Mast in the distance, the tallest free standing building in Britain apparently (330 metres) and was taken near New Hall women's prison. A graduated filter was used to keep the detail in the sky as the sun was setting and it was exposed at f16 for 2 seconds at 17mm. The yellow tint was added in Lightroom through split toning.

Ullswater View

A super quick post this morning as I'm going away for a few days and won't post, and as I didn't the other day I thought I best put one up. This was the view coming down St Sunday Crag in the lake district. I'm putting this up as it is the first time I've used a photoshop plugin that can mimic different types of film, it's called Exposure, by Alien Skin. There are loads of presets depending on which film you want to mimic, this was Velvia 50. As I was never a film SLR user I have no real 'favourite film' but I think a lot of older photographers may and this plugin may interest them.

Silhouette

Another one from the back catalog today, I need to go get a new sensor cleaning brush for my camera so I didn't take any photos yesterday as I didn't want the dust I could see to become "welded" to the sensor. This is a really easy technique to produce great silhouettes of, well whatever your shooting, buildings, animals or people are all good subjects. The key is metering from the sky, as the sky is often a lot brighter relative to the land you will usually get a very high shutter speed such as 1/2000, this will expose the sky correctly but leave the subject black. If you have an exposure lock button (a * on canons) focus on the sky behind your subject, press exposure lock and then refocus your shot on the subject, you usually get about 10 seconds before the exposure lock turns off, take the shot and Roberts your fathers brother.

Blurred Trees

Another quick post this morning I am afraid, this abstract photo was taken towards the end of the walk at the weekend, where a few "experimental" pictures were taken. This was exposed at f11 for 1/13, the small aperture was used in this case just to bring down the shutter speed, I could have just set the speed in shutter priority (Tv mode on canons). Whilst taking the photo the camera was moved up and down for the blurred effect, I was tempted to even turn this black & white or go the other way and change the colours completely (rotating the colour wheel) but in the end I decided to leave it as it was taken.

Rocks In the Peak District

Just A quick post today, we went to Derwent Resevoir in the peak district at the weekend to take some landscapes, midday is not ideal for landscapes, in fact it's probably the worst time to shoot as the light is usually very harsh (creating sharp shadows). The walk was very pleasant, having never been to the peaks I was very impressed and would advise anyone who likes walking to go and have a look round (it was full of cyclists too).
I had been thinking of black and white versions of what I was shooting to try and create an Ansel Adams style photo, if you have never heard of him check him out here. This was done at f22 at 42mm for 1/20. I did some dodging and burning in photoshop for a bit more contrast and to try to improve the sky.

A split toning RAW conversion

I seem to be putting a lot of tree shots up at the moment, no real reason other than they are a subject I enjoy shooting so here's another. The sunset was great last night but my location selection wasn't the best but as it was getting a bit late I didn't want to move. You really don't want to be driving along looking for locations whilst the sun is setting, especially on windy country roads hunched over the wheel, marvelling at the sunset, very dangerous. I wasn't overly happy with the shots I got so I really experimented with my RAW conversion until I found an effect I quite liked. If you do shoot in RAW I would recommend getting adobe lightroom (here). It's just full of options for getting the most out of your photos and there are loads of tutorials on the web about the program, such as lightroomkillertips.com. Anyway the main effect I used here is called split toning, this is where you can pick the colour and saturation for the highlights and the shadows independently, I pretty much used yellow for both but you can use complimentary colours. It can be a bit hit and miss but that's the beauty of shooting digitally.
The info on this shot is as follows: f16 (to maximise DOF) for 1/2 second (so using a tripod) at about 34mm (shot in aperture priority). I did shoot with an exposure compensation of -2 this means the shot was underexposed (for the sky), I was originally going to merge 2 shots, one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the land but in the end I left the land as a silhouette because I liked the impact of the sky. Hopefully going to get some shots in the peak district tomorrow, where my foreground interest will be rocks instead of trees!

Flower Macro photography

Macro photography is where the subject is recorded at actual (or larger) size, and as most sensors (in digital cameras) or film don't exceed 35mm (corner to corner) the subjects have to be very small. I really enjoy this side of photography as you can get some great results from fairly ordinary subjects and you don't need to travel to far off locations. Flowers and insects make really good subjects. One aspect of photography it helps to know about in macro photography is depth of field, this is the measure of how much of a subject is in focus, this can vary from miles, as with landscape photography to millimetres, in macro photography. One factor when dealing with depth of field (DOF) is working distance, ie how close the camera is to the subject as the closer you get, the thinner the DOF. To combat this it is often necessary to stop down your aperture (to say f11 or 16), this results in longer shutter speeds as there is less light getting in (remember smaller apertures = smaller hole = bigger f numbers). and therefore a tripod is often used, especially if shooting indoor. A really good DOF simulator can be found here

This image was taken at f8, 1/50 at 180mm mounted on a tripod and I used a black background to really draw the viewers eye into the picture.

A Trip To The Armouries

Yesterday a friend and I went to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, he had just got a canon 400D and wanted some tips on using the shutter priority and aperture priority modes. I said as a general rule of thumb, to avoid any motion blur from shooting handheld always use a shutter speed of 1/focal length ie at 50mm don't go slower than 1/50, at 300mm don't go slower than 1/300. A quicker shutter speed is needed at longer focal lengths (more zoomed in) because the shake of your hand is amplified.
This was put to the test when we went inside the museum, where even with the aperture wide open (low f numbers, 2.8 or 4) we were still getting shutter speeds too slow to hand hold, flash would have been helpful or better still a tripod but I think we would probably have been shot at by the guards if we even attempted to break out the tripod, so we just cranked up the iso settings.
The test was a bit extreme but it helped my friend get to grips with the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, we also had a go at panning shots (of people jousting none the less) but thats another story. Anyway for those still reading this shot was done at 1/400 at f8 at 38mm, I realise this wasn't exactly practicing what I preached but I was at iso 800, I would have rather been at iso 100 for 1/50, but I was lying down and the suspicious looks of the guards watching 2 seemingly pro photographers was making me a little uneasy.

Another Moody Tree

After some nice comments by fellow bloggers I decided to post another shot from the same location, a little bit lazy I know but I haven't taken any pictures today (it is only 8am, landscape photographers will be saying the best of the day is over no doubt).

This was again taken on my 5D at 25mm, f11 I combined two exposures in photoshop, one for the sky and one for the land and then converted it to duotone. The tones I used were black, pantone 1205c and focoltone 5012 (so it's actually tritone). A quick note if you are trying a similar effect in ps you must first convert the image from RGB to grayscale (under image, mode).

Anyway thanks for the comments and hope you enjoy future photos.

Wuthering Heights

This image was taken at Top Withens a few miles west of the small village of Haworth, near Bradford. The small ruin was supposedly the inspiration for the manor featured in Emily Bronte's book "Wuthering Heights" There is however a plaque stating that the fairly unremarkable ruin bore no resemblance to the house in the book.
This image was taken with a Canon 5D with a 24-70mm lens on a tripod at 34mm at f11 for 1/40 of a second.

My First Blog

Hi Everyone,
I've decided to start a photo blog where I will publish some of my photos and a short description about the shot. This is to supplement my site at http://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/ where these, and others, can be viewed or bought.

This blog will be aimed at photo enthusiasts who are interested in tips on taking better photos, advice on processing digital files or simply looking for some inspiration. Like other blogs, I may get sidetracked and start other topics but all should be related to photography.

All comments are welcome and I hope you enjoy your visit.

Pete