Upnor and the Medway

Well finally managed to shoot a few frames of new images. Down by the Medway and being out of the wind it was almost trying to be warm. The light was not great but with a bit of post processing, got a reasonable image.

Wales Wrap Up

We are now back from Wales. Very relaxed and chilled after a great week away. The weather was warm and dry, although there was not much sun. On the last day we walked up into the hills behind Tanygrisau. There is an old slate mine and and a nice lake up in the valley.

Victory Show final images.

Back at work now after a two week holiday and I have lots of images to work on. At the moment here are the last of the images from the Victory Show at Leicester. A bit of HDR processing and and a couple of images that I like.

Sissinghurst.

The gardens at Sissinghurst are always worth a trip. At this time of year they are not at their best as far as flower blooms are concerned.

The tower is well worth the climb to the top as the view is spectacular.

Rochester

I drove down to Rochester with the aim of shooting some HDR images around the town.

St Mary's Lower Higham.

I have been getting out to shoot images on a more regular basis recently. Since the start of the year I have had a couple of spells when I have produced a relatively large amount of images, then I would go through a spell where I was producing almost no new images.

Recently though I have made a conscious effort to get out with a camera and create.

I have started to experiment with producing time lapse videos. I don't shoot with a video camera, but with a still camera and then output the resulting series of still images as a video. I am also trying to get deeply into shooting HDR images. These here are produced from 9 images bracketed at 1 stop apart. The results are some of the most 'stretched' tonally that I have taken.

Dartford Bridge images 22 years apart.

Another warm evening today and I decided to go out to see what I could find to photograph.

At this time of year the sun sets directly behind the Dartford Bridge as viewed from Greenhithe. It is a return to the scene of one of my most used image. Twenty two years ago, just before the Dartford bridge joined in the middle, I got a picture of the sun setting right in the gap of the unfinished bridge.

Shot on film, Ektachrome or whatever 100 ISO film I was shooting at the time. The camera would have been an Olympus OM1 or OM2sp lens most likely a 50mm or 35mm.

Luck played a great part in the image. The bridge had been under construction for some time but was completed very quickly from this point, as the risk of wind damage to the bridge increases as the two sides get closer together, due to vortices created by the wind interacting with the edge of the deck. The weather that spring had been very poor with few clear evenings only a grey overcast when I was free to shoot. One evening the sun came out and I was free, so I went out with my camera. I knew roughly where I needed to be to get the image as I had tracked the sun on an OS map, but I could only get the exact location by being on the ground. This was long before the internet and smart phones with apps that can work out all that information. Also I had to accept the tide as it was on that night.

The results were worth the effort. I shot several rolls of film and a couple of the images have been used on several occasions. This image was used as a magazine cover and won me the prize of Transport photographer of the year in 1991.

Tonights images are slightly different.

London

Day off today and with the first bit of good weather in days I was off up to London with my camera.

A long meandering walk across london was on my mind, with lunch at Borough Market, coffee later and a snack in the evening. What could be better.
The weather stayed sunny and I ended up shooting about 10Gb of images.

These are the last I shot but the first I am posting. The low sun was lighting up the skateboard park on the south bank and that mixed with some HDR processing gave some great images.

Easter at Shorne

At Easter we have a tradition going back over a few years, for a walk around the country park at Shorne woods. Each year the wearer is different. This year it was grey and overcast.  So it was time to do some HDR

Royal Naval College

The Isle of Dogs from the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Painted Hall Greenwich

One of the great interiors in England.

Winchelsea

Another image from the weekend.

Boat at Dungeness

On my trip to Dungeness. I spent some time exploring the boats drawn up on the beach. This one had passed its last chance to sail again. but gave some great images.

Sunrise

I revisited one of my images taken in Scotland a few days ago.

Ightham Mote

The last picture from my trip out last week another HDR image of Ightham Mote.

St Lawrence Seal Chart

ON my trip out yesterday I passes the church of St Lawrence at Seal Chart.  It was another candidate for an HDR treatment.

Ightham Mote

I had a run out today. It was bright and clear but very cold.

I ended up at Ightham Mote and was doing some more HDR work.

Borough Market and the Shard

In London yesterday I had a visit to Borough Market. It has been some time since I was last there and the Shard now dominates the area.

London reprocessed

I reprocessed as a HDR image one of the photographs I took in London last week. The look I was aiming for was more dramatic than literal!

November Extras

As a final post for November I have peen playing around again with generating High Dynamic Range (HDR)  images. 

This is a post production process which blends two or more images of exactly the same subject taken at different exposures. The resulting blended HDR image forces a greater range of tones than exist in a single exposure, into the 256 tonal steps of a standard 8bit image.  The results can range from unnoticeable to the very extreme. I generally use unnoticeable, but these images move a bit more towards the extreme.