High Drama!

It was a very windy, blustery, gusty afternoon up on Bridgestones Moor. The sky was stormy but magnificent, The moor, standing 1400ft above sea level, was relatively dry underfoot. I ventured forth with my Canon 6D and 16-35 f4 IS lens to capture some drama. The raw images turned out great but there was something missing in the straight edit of this excellent

There are occasions when you want to capture the scene ‘as is’. Product photography, commercial shoots and such that require the realistic colours and textures of the items you’re shooting. I have done such shoots and they can be satisfying but for me, landscapes are a different beast.

The photographer and YouTuber Martin Castein, mentions in one of his videos about white balance and how it can convey different emotions to a photograph. Landscapes when you’re out in them, invoke certain emotional responses that commercial shoots don’t. Sometimes you want to present an exaggerated vision of the moment captured and the landscape in which you were shooting. High winds and stormy skies can be portrayed in a more dramatic fashion than just actual documenting the scene when you were there. I created a Lightroom preset to edit the raw images and just tweaked exposure and aspect to suit the shot

The Bridestones sit on top of the aforementioned moor, high above Todmorden in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. They are an outcrop of gritstone moulded and shaped by erosion known as weathering. The indentations, the cracks, the smooth edges have been made by hundreds of thousand of years of exposure to the elements. To those of us living in upper Calderdale, they are an iconic spot and much visited. I have been there many times but interestingly, it is never busy like the famous Cow and Calf rocks above Ilkley. They are in many ways, superior in their location and general wildness in my humble opinion. The high Pennine moorland of Calderdale is vast compared to say Bradford district, although the two run into each other high above the Worth Valley and Bronte country.

I know these types of representations are not to everyone’s taste but I find they convey how I felt at the time of taking the photos. Coming down off the top, I felt truly windswept, as if I’d had some sort of extreme spa treatment. On several shots, I had trouble holding the camera still enough to take them but an increase in shutter speed and a solid camera body helped. One of the many things modern photographers and YouTubers don’t say about full frame DSLR bodies is that their weight and ergonomics are useful at times. Yes, they are heavier than mirrorless cameras but they feel great in the hand and the weight adds stability taking hand held shots. I really don’t get on with tripods, they are a faff and you have to decide on a composition rather than move around quickly to get the better one. I’m loving my return to Canon DSLRs. They are a joy to hold, to use and I love the colours and detail you get out of what is seen as old technology. On commercials shoots, they are a dream because of their rugged reliability. They are also quicker to operate than mirrorless and are instantly ready from when you turn the camera on. The battery life is twice if not more of their mirrorless equivalent which is another advantage when using them commercially.

I hope you like this selection of landscape images and that they convey a little bit of time and place.

Sunrise & Sunset

We had a break in North Wales last week. The hotel we stayed at is at the mouth of the Conwy estuary and we were fortunate to have a suite with a terrace overlooking the estuary. As far as photo locations, it’s about as easy as you could get for capturing great sunsets and sunrise images. I took my Sony cameras and lenses and shot at a variety of focal lengths, capturing various stages of the sun coming up and going down.

I kind of fell out of love with sunset photos a couple of years ago, as I tended to overdo them. Living in the upper Calder Valley, there are some great vantage points to capture amazing sunsets and spectacular skies. If you repeat a subject too often, you can get fed up of it. I had reached that stage and shied away from regular posting of orange skies and silhouetted landscape features.

These sunrise photos were taken using the Sony 20mm f/1.8g and the Sony 40mm f/2.5g. I say sunrise but the sun hadn’t quite risen so they more blue hour than sunrise. The location lends itself to these images as it’s a tidal estuary so water levels create fabulous detail in the sandbanks and the meandering path of the river Conwy out to sea. We were also fortunate to have some beautiful weather for these types of photo. Most landscape photographers like moody skies, fog or challenging conditions but clear skies and warm weather can bring benefits too. The colours rendered up in the early morning were stunning.

If you think the sunrises were good, the sunsets were incredible. The sky was on fire and add to that, beautiful rich patterned clouds topped the deep orange horizons. This image was taken with the Sony 24-50 f/2.8g lens which pretty much was glued to my camera throughout the days of our break. It is a superb piece of glass that covers the wide to standard focal lengths in a small package. I took a Sony 70-200 f/4 lens as well but didn’t really enjoy using it as it struggled with contrast in bright sun. I decided whilst away to trade for a Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 g2, in the hope I will get a better long telephoto option. This view looking west towards the mouth of the estuary and marina was the perfect spot to get the best of the dying sun. It reignited my desire to take sunset photos and also to spend more time at the coast.

This final image over the marina was taken ten minutes before the sun went down and was taken with the 70-200. It’s a great lens but also a dust magnet (for some reason) so let’s hope the Tamron performs a bit better. There is something magical about the going down of the sun but I also loved the early mornings. I’m an early riser and the onset of summer is a gift for my photography. I need to get out more early morning and late evening, I have spent a few months in a state of apathy regarding my landscape photography, maybe born out of a lack of self confidence, a worry about sharing in a saturated area of photography and a bleak winter. I used to be an autumn/winter fan but in my older age, I find myself appreciating spring and summer more. if you haven’t visited North Wales, I urge you to go. It is a beautiful region with great beaches, stunning mountains and some of the best locations for sunset I’ve ever experienced.