Category Archives: Urban and Rural

Urban and Rural photography

Isolation

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On Saturday I went on the fortnightly photo walk at Heaton Park.  Each time there is a theme and this week’s was “black and white”.  I wanted to go beyond that and create some sort of narrative theme to link my images, and settled on two – the first being “isolation”; I feel black-and-white lends itself to this as I think contrast and composition needs to be used more carefully to show the subject(s) – colour isn’t available as a separating agent except in the difference in tones.  The snow emphasised that even more by creating further contrast in the environment.

As I took my shots and looked for subjects I tried to find things that worked with my theme.  I then edited down to shots which I thought worked as a sequence of images to create a narrative of isolation.

So, here are the images:

Departed

Departed

The lonely road

The lonely road

Sheltered

Watched

Escape

Escape?

The unseen

The unseen

A lonely walk

A cold walk

A place to hide

A place to hide

Forgotten shelter

A forgotten shelter

I’m pleased with the results from this shoot and I’m finding I get more out of my images by looking to create a narrative and carrying a theme through them.

TAOP: Part 3 – Colour: Colour relationships – Warm and cool colours

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The colour relationships section continues to talk about another kind of opposition of colours on the colour circle – those that appear cold (blue-green) and those that appear warm (orange-red).  These are entirely perceptual – and down to obvious associations such as the blue of a body of water and the orange glow of fire.

Looking at recent photos for this section, the ‘complimentary colour’ shots tend to mix both warm and cool colours, however I’ve picked out a couple of them which I think show ‘warm’ and ‘cool’.

Warm

ISO800, 1/50s, f/2.8

While the background is green, there is a slight yellow/orangeness to it which – together with the yellow in the foreground – make the image appear warm.

Cool

ISO400, 1/100s, f/8

In this one it’s the violet and green which appear cool – though there is a contrast with the yellow in the image.

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Setting cool against warm creates and obvious, strong contrast and being opposites on the colour circle they balance each other.  This kind of contrast is common in colours of light – e.g. sun near the horizon creates a warming yellow-to-red cast.  Meanwhile, a clear blue sky has a cooling effect on subjects in shade.

Photo De-construction: Sunrise over Luddenden

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This post is a run-down on a shot I took this morning – a sunrise over the valley outside my house, across the village of Luddenden.  Click the image to see it large in Flickr’s Lightbox.

Sunrise over Luddenden

Background

It’s been very clear at the end of this week and a couple of times I saw sunset shots taken while I was stuck in work, so on Saturday afternoon I head out on a walk to find somewhere to get a shot from.  I wander along to Booth, before coming back and walking up a bridle way on a steep hill to get to higher ground.  The Photobuddy app on my iPhone says sunset is 16:14 – but while it accounts for location, I don’t think it accounts for terrain.  Being surrounded by hills means the sun goes and hides a bit earlier than the app says.

So, around 4pm the sun is close to disappearing behind a hill – I run up a road in hopes of getting to higher ground before it disappears, but the sun iss receding at about the same rate as I’m climbing the hill.

I get a few shots and when I get home create an HDR (High Dynamic Range), below (click for large Lightbox view on Flickr), but it isn’t really what I’m looking for because the sun is gone already – and I can’t get a natural-looking sky.  The sunset picture isn’t far off what it looked like, but it still suffers from the unnatural look HDR often deliverers (typically when over-done).

Yorkshire Dusk near Midgley

So with sunset gone, and now well into dusk, I head back down the hill – nearly toppling over a few times as I go.

Bed at midnight and alarm set for 6.45am – I figure I’ll return to the same location (by car) and catch sunrise.  Nature conspires against me though, and there are clouds at sunrise, which only start to clear once I get home.  Thankfully my house is lower and behind a hill – so it has its own sunrise later than when the sun first appears to everybody else!

Taking The Shot

I shoot a few shots of the sun coming over the hill with my telephoto lens.  I’m happy with them, but I look at the overall scenery – which the telephoto wasn’t giving me – and decide  to put my wide-angle lens on to try another HDR shot.

The clouds are interesting, so I compose the shot to include a good chunk of sky.  The fence is unavoidable from my balcony, but I move the tripod to set up some diagonal lines which I found pleasing – not least because they contrast with the more ‘natural’ shapes of the hills and fields.  Moving the tripod means I get a Z-shape across, with the points on the left and right more-or-less in line with one another.

I set my camera to get something which is slightly under-exposed for the ground and over-exposed for the sky and set up bracketing for shots at -+2 stops exposure – delivering three exposures to use for the HDR process.

Set exposure

Longest exposure

Shortest exposure

I use Photomatix to perform the HDR process – setting it to ‘Natural’ and adjusting gamma to decrease brightness.  I then sharpen with Lightroom to get the final image.

I’m really happy with the result – and am considering getting it printed out fairy large for the wall.  The only thing I want to try though is walking down to the fence and shooting it from there – perhaps to get more of the village in, and also to eliminate the fence itself.  If there’s similar weather in the near future I’ll give that a go.

Just after these shots a dense fog rolled in – and the sun wasn’t visible at all.  There was no chance of getting a sunset this evening – so I’m really happy I got something in the morning!

TAOP: Part 3 – Colour: Exercise – Colour relationships (Part Two)

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In the first part of this exercise the aim was to produce three pictures with complimentary colours in the rations suggested by J W Von Goerthe.  The second part, however, is not so strict; the aim is to produce produce three or four images featuring colour combinations that appeal to me – combining two colours or more.

The aim is to demonstrate that there is no single ‘correctness’ to complementary colours and to make me aware of any imbalance in the combinations, and what effect that has.

 Yellow, Violet and Green – Flower

ISO400, 1/100s, f/8

I’m getting my monies-worth out of these flowers.  Especially as I haven’t paid for them.  I took this at the same time as the photo for the first part of the exercise.  I liked the way the yellow stands out ver clearly within the image against the violet of the flower.  It draws the eye as though it’s the main subject of the image.

The green itself just serves as background – it brightens the image up but doesn’t draw the eye away from the main relationship between the yellow and violet.

 Blue and Orange – Sunrise

ISO100, 1/4000s, f/4

This is a roughly 1:1 ratio of blue and orange.  I do like this combination, and while they’re not in the ‘harmonious’ proportions, I think the darkness of the blue and the paleness of the orange makes it a pleasing combination.

 Yellow and Green – Fence and Bush

ISO800, 1/50s, f/2.8

While the main colours here are yellow and green, the main appeal for me here is how the yellow plays off the black and white.  The contrast creates a touch of ‘alarm’ – like  a warning.  Perhaps I’m thinking of a wasp because of the yellow stripe.  It doesn’t sit well with the green background either, which further enhances the tension created by the ‘warning’.

TAOP: Part 3 – Colour: Exercise – Primary and secondary colours – Violet

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This is my final post for the colour library exercise on primary and secondary colours – and is the third of the secondaries.  A bit more background is in the first post - Primary and secondary colours – Red.

Violet

Surprisingly I found some flowers around the duck pond – and more surprisingly one of them was violet.  I really had expected to struggle to find something natural for this colour!  Unfortunately the shots themselves aren’t exactly master-pieces.  Poor focus and pretty poor composition.  I was concentrating on just getting the colour, and I didn’t want to kneel down to get a good shot as the ground was soooo cold!  Straight away I’d give myself a ‘could do better’ for this.

Closest Match

The closest match here was the over-exposed shot.  ISO1000, 1/40s exposure at f/2.8.  As you can see, it’s far from the best shot I’ve ever taken!

The Alternatives

These were both too dark – and there’s not really much between them (except the shortest exposure is actually in focus)!  These were shot at f/5 and f/4.5.