Category: Photography

HDR.  Usually used when the dynamic range of the view extends beyond the range that your sensor or film can capture.

Its also of use when you want to give a real boost to an image.  If you look at the image above, it has a lot of potential but the light is not right.  This is where HDR can be used to really give your picture a boost.

That boost that can give an unearthly feel to an image, or a cartoony feel to an image, depending on how you process the files.

When I saw this view I knew that the unearthly feel that HDR can give would give a fantastic looking image.

For my HDR work I use a product called Photomatix2. I make basic adjustments in Lightroom first then, export the files into Photomatix to combine them and produce the HDR file. It is then imported back into Lightroom.

Photomatix has a number of presets such as Normal, Smooth Skies, Painterly and Gunge. For this I picked Grunge, the most over the top option.

The downside of this option is that while it is capable of fantastic and dramatic images, it really makes the greens go completely outrageous.

After giving the image a few tweaks to make the best out of it I then saved it and took it back into Lightroom to fix the Greens and apply a couple of grad filters to darken the sky and the bottom of the picture. All in all just a few minutes work to produce and image that reflects more closely the emotion of what my eyes saw and not what the original capture produced.

Sometimes arranging a photographic shoot seems like one big complicated jigsaw.

My availability, the Studios availability, and the models availability; getting it all sorted can sometimes take days.  Lets not forget, prop’s that have to be sourced, and sometimes a hairdresser and makeup artist.

One my photographic shoots that I am arranging currently feels just like that complicated Jigsaw.

Luckily I am dealing with a very professional model who understands these things.

Sometimes I think I should just take a pretty girl into a meadow and just shoot with natural light, but then you get weather issues.

99% of photography is nothing to do with taking the actual pictures!

The purpose of this last photography trip was primary for the wonderful landscape opportunities but I also had a go at Wildlife photography.

Now I am not very good at wildlife photography but I do enjoy it.  I did get a few images that I am quite proud but there certainly not good enough to show.

But I know your all dying to see them so I thought I would post just a few, please don’t judge my people and landscape photography by these!

We have been blessed with good weather but it was only natural that at some point we would have a day of rain.

With heavy rain and full rivers and streams the waterfalls were in full flow. While the light was not conductive to landscape photography I took a number of pictures for reference.

Taken on my iPhone.

The Isle of Lewis has some wonderful archaeological sites. In particular there are a number of fine prehistoric stone circles.

By midmorning we had visited four stone circles. The weather was, shall we say interesting. Dark storm clouds kept whipping, by but glimpses of blue kept appearing in the distance, illuminating patches of hillside.

I set up the camera and waited for the light to appear. Oh so very briefly a shaft of sunlight appeared, but by the time I had metered the scene, and set the mirror lock-up, just before I tripped the cable release the sun disappeared.

We waited a while but then a few drops of rain started to fall. So with that we packed up and walked back to the car over the peat bog.

By the time we had reached the car the rain had blown over and the stone circle was again illuminated in a shaft of bright sunlight. A lesson in patience I think.

The next two circles while warranting a visit did not get blessed with the light.

The last circle was the most impressive, and the visitors centre made a most impressive Latte. Now the dark clouds had blown over and we were blessed with golden sunlight which lasted the rest of the day. Unfortunately brilliant sunshine while chocolate box pretty does not evoke the drama that dark clouds and shafts of brilliant sunshine can evoke.

Maybe better luck next time. Landscape photography is certainly not an easy art!

Photographed on my iPhone and Edited in Adobe Photoshop Express.

My Landscape Photography definitely has a manmade influence. Most of my Landscapes are of manmade structures, old Bridges, Piers, Abbey ruins and Churches.

For your true Landscapes, then an early start is essential. Up here in the Outer Hebrides Dawn today was about 04:00am and Sunrise at 05:10.

At 04:30am this morning, I could be found down at the bay setting up the medium format camera gear. Early starts is not something I find easy, but when in a location like this, a Sunrise is hard to resist.