Castle Hill

I braved the cold today and went up to Castle Hill near Huddersfield. The day had been very crisp and clear but there wasn't enough cloud to get a really good sunset. I tried some side lit shots but I had little success, in hindsight I should have found a vantage point a mile or so away so I could incorporate the hill and the sunset, maybe next time. I had to resort to a HDR shot to get some detail in the dark side of the tower. I also had to correct the converging verticals in photoshop.

Ice Ice Baby

Taking a break from landscapes I got this on one of my rambles, I liked the abstract quality and the wavey lines in the ice. The pebbles break it up a little and add a focal point but to be honest there wasn't a huge amount of compositional thought behind this one. A lot of photo mags say it's a good idea to freeze some leaves in a plastic tub to get some abstract ice shots, I've not tried it myself but it seems like a decent rainy day thing if you are into macro photography. As for exif, this was ISO100, f/8,1/25 at 70mm.

I'm getting some mileage from these...

I think this will be the last from this set and I'm only posting now instead of tomorrow as I might be busy then and I'm not now. The first jetty was the one I wanted to get but I arrived and it wasn't in the best state of repair, good job I didn't plan to get the boat there! I was after some long exposure shots so out came the 6 stop ND filter which got me to 25 seconds at f/16 (ISO100). I used a cooler white balance to give the colder tone, you can either do this in camera or, if shooting RAW, in processing.

The second shot was on the way up Catbells, using some frozen vegetation as FG interest and a 3 stop ND grad to keep the sky under control. This was taken at f/16 ISO 100, 1/10 sec at 16mm.

Panoramics of the Lake District

A couple more from the same walk as the previous post. These were two panoramic shots of the valleys either side of Catbells, the first one shows Derwent water, Skiddaw, Blencathra and Keswick.

I'm not 100% sure of the name of the name of the other valley but apparently it has a town called littletown that is in some of the Beatrix Potter books. It was in shadow for most of the day so remained frosty, the sun lit up the mountains behind it though. In this shot you can also see Grasmoor and Grisedale Pike (I think).I may have posted Instructions for creating Panoramics a while ago, with photoshop's photomerge script they are really quick and easy. I would always use a tripod just to save any trouble when editing, if you get a bit of a slope your panoramic can quickly become very thin!

Cat bells and Derwent Water

We were in the lake district for New Years day and decided to beat the crowds and climb cat bells early on. The weather was great with no clouds and no wind so when the sun came up and lit up the Derwent valley it was difficult to take a bad shot.

We were taking pictures all the way up and concentrating on using the sun to side light the hill. There was a lot of frost about so frozen rocks and vegetation was good for foreground interest. I had a 3 stop graduated filter on because I didn't want to blow out the sun and the sky, this often gives a star burst effect which I quite like but you sometimes get a bit of flare somewhere else in the shot (usually right on the focal point) but this is easily correctable in photoshop, try to keep your lenses and additional filters free from any dust of finger prints to minimise this.
Again it's often easier to go on full manual and dial in your aperture and then play around with your shutter speed to get the exposure you want, it's not always best to let the camera decide, especially if you have a lot of contrast in the scene. The first shot was taken at ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/5 sec.
The shot from the jetty was taken later on when the sun was well up, however as it is winter you get a nice low sun for a lot of the day. This was a 10 second exposure to really take any movement out of the water in the lake. I also set the aperture to f/22 and the ISO to 50. On my canon you have to set expanded ISO to on in your custom settings. To slow things down further I slapped on a 6 stop ND filter (basically thick sunglasses for your lens) this allowed me to get the exposure time to 10 seconds.