Reeds, Water & A Long Exposure

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I took a recent excursion to a local fishing lake to get some watery shots and I liked it so much, that I had to go back again. This time though the weather wasn't in cahoots with my intentions, so my attempts at apprehending the setting sun and incarcerating it in my digital casket did not go to plan. That wily old sun. 

But as I was making my way out through the undergrowth I came across some reeds that caught my fancy. There was a bit of breeze about the place which didn't look too good on the water surface, so I set up my ever dependable tripod and prepared for some long exposures.

I wanted the surface of the water to be as smooth as possible so I did what I could to minimise the amount of light that was able to enter the lens, thereby extending the exposure as much as I could. This would dissipate the ripples, as they would all blur into each other, thus creating the illusion of a smooth finish, ideally.

I did this by closing the apperture to f/22 and bringing down the ISO to 50, or L as it's known on my camera. I would normally do neither of these things, as they each result in a loss of picture quality, but I decided the ends justified the means. Nothing was going to deter me from my plotted course.

Nothing. 

f/22, ISO 50, 6 second exposure

I visited a local fishing lake recently but I didn't want to go fishing.

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I will admit though that I had a private, urgent need that required satisfaction. And yet, I didn't have the slightest desire to stand, tackle in hand, on the banks of this great pond and while away the hours tugging on my rod (And no, it is not wile). So now we have cleared that up, as many an angler has had to do. I will admit that my great need was to get some images of water.

You know how you might get a hankering for a certain type of food all of a sudden, and nothing will make it go away until that craving for a century egg or Casu Marzu or whatever floats your boat is satiated. Well that is the position I found myself in. I wanted some reflections and I wanted them right away.

So I headed to the aforementioned fishing lake at sundown to see what I could find and I was pleasantly surprised. The sun for its part was ‘playing the game’ and I managed to get a few nice shots in the bag. Nothing earth shattering, but they gratified the flustering urge that had been growing inside me.

And after that lazy sun had slumped beneath the horizon, I sauntered past the fishermen, still grappling with their wet flies and wooly worms, with many pleasing thoughts filling my contented mind.

As the sun was saying goodbye it deposited some golden tones
on the blue/grey lake which worked well.

The Cotswolds on a sunny afternoon in Spring

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It’s been quite a while since I last posted, mainly due to malaise, and the fact that it’s been a while since I last picked up my camera, predominantly for the same reasons.

But the guilt of having an expensive piece of machinery sat about gathering dust, along with a low hanging chimerical smear of cloud gently, but insistently draping a curtain of shame over the back of my mind for not ‘getting out there’ and ‘capturing the light’ etc etc, ad nauseum, was enough to spur me to action.

So action is what happened.

I took an action packed trip up the road and got some pictures my local area, so here they are, with a bit of info culled from various tourist sites about the Cotswolds.

“The Cotswolds is the most 'quintessentially English' and unspoiled region of England where you cannot help but fall in love with the uniqueness of it.” 

Creating a Black and white image with contrast from a colour image with none

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To see the entire layer palette scroll to the bottom of the screen. 

Here is a picture of Arlington Row, a collection of 17th century weavers’ cottages that sits next to the banks of the river Coln in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. Originally built as a monastic wool store in 1380 before being converted, these cottages are the very epitome of picturesque, especially when you consider that they are not just the most photographed dwellings in the Cotswolds, but the most photographed anything in the Cotswolds.

Combining exposures for a painterly effect

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When I’m out and about taking landscape photos one thing is painfully obvious, however careful my approach, or however fastidious my preparation, nature could not give the smallest toss about me and my troubles. In fact sometimes I think that nature actively dislikes me, that I have must have committed some terrible indiscretion at the expense of nature and it now snubs me at every given opportunity.

These of course are ridiculous thoughts, nature doesn't just dislike only me, it dislikes everyone, and that is a fact.