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. 

Autumn photography - images that work, images that don't, and why

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After taking a trip down to Westonbirt Arboretum the other weekend to check out the autumn colours I thought it might be interesting, if only to me, to look at some of the pictures I managed to get and to explore why some images work better than others.

Managed by the Forestry Commission, Westonbirt Arboretum is located near the historic market town of Tetbury in Gloucestershire, England, and is perhaps the most important and widely known arboretum in the United Kingdom.

Planted in the heyday of Victorian plant hunting in the mid-19th century, today Westonbirt Arboretum is one of the finest tree collections in the world, carefully laid out within a beautiful Grade One listed historic landscape.

It is this variation of trees that makes the place so interesting, especially during autumn, as the transition into colour manifests itself across the species, and combined with the endless shapes and structures of the different plants, means there is always something to catch the eye.

But despite the fantastical displays of colour and the incredible variety on offer, or maybe because of it, it’s not always straightforward to get a satisfying image, it still needs thought and patience to capture something worthwhile. Just getting an image full of colour doesn’t guarantee its success, sometimes the overabundance of colour can make us overlook the other aspects that make a picture work like composition and light.

Portugal Day 5 - Unpopular stones & a chapel of bones

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Rose to a rather dismal morning that, with the usual turn of events, manifested itself into a rather dismal day, weather wise. Today we were heading to Évora, with its wonderfully preserved monuments and buildings of public interest that led UNESCO to protect it as a World Heritage Site in 1996.

Each age has left its trace on Évora. It was the Celts who named it Ebora and the Romans gave it its most famous landmark, the Temple of Diana. Dating from the 2nd century, it is one of the Iberian Peninsula's best preserved Roman monuments, raised on a 3m high stone platform, with 14 of the original 18 granite Corinthian columns still standing. While the whitewashed houses, arches, and twisting alleyways that characterise the town reflect the Moorish presence.

But before we got there, we were making a scheduled stop at The Cromlech of Almendres, scheduled because I had scheduled it, much to the dismay of everyone else, the philistines that they are. Dating from the Neolithic period, somewhere between 4000 and 2000 B.C they have been called "the Portuguese Stonehenge" and are the most important megalithic group in the Iberian Peninsula. Consisting of a huge oval of almost one hundred rounded granite monoliths, some engraved with symbolic markings, it is believed, due to its elevated location and orientation with regards to the cyclic movement of the sun and moon, to be a sacred place, although what its actual use was is still a matter of some discussion.

But before we even got there though we made another stop, this time of the unscheduled variety, because the road to the stones passed through a cork plantation, and these trees had been freshly harvested, so still had the deep red under-flesh, no idea if that is the correct term for the part of the tree that is beneath the bark, but it’s the term I’m using. The rich, red ochre of the under-flesh chiming perfectly with the green foliage of the canopies meant these were the cork trees I had been searching for, so I ordered a complete halt and I was soon out capturing them in all their glory.

Freshly harvested cork trees and their lovely under-flesh

Portugal Day 4 - Rice, salt, grapes and a killer robot.

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Headed out early into the paddy fields in case the changeable weather we were having would be on my side, but all it seemed to bring was cloud and a bit more cloud, add to this the fact I was battling a ferocious gale that whipped about my person like the thrashing skirts of an enraged flamenco dancer trying to wrestle me to the ground, it was not the most calming way to spend a morning, especially a morning feeling as groggy as I did.

The brooding, overcast sky bought out the colours of the vegetation