Night Photography

I feel like I should apologise. For the third update in a row I'm posting photographs and not paintings or drawings. I'm not going to though. It's my blog, I'll do what I want, y'hear me! (I will post some drawings and paintings soon, I promise, I have some underway/completed already. I've just been enjoying the winter scenery a lot lately.)

These were all taken from about 4.30pm onwards and so there was very little light, particularly from the photo of the Knowle Locks sign onwards, where, other than the street lights, it was about as dark as it would get on that night. As such there was a lot of trial and error involved when it came to focusing and framing the shot because nothing could be seen in my viewfinder in the dead of night.

This was somewhat intentional, as I wanted to try out some more long exposures, having dabbled with them in the forest the other weekend. I figured if I waited until dusk, I could use the maximum exposure time allowed by my camera of 15 seconds and see what kind of effects this would create. So, with tripod in tow*, I set off to the nearby canal.

 

The resultant colours are exactly how they came out on the camera, with no post processing, bar a bit of cropping in 2 or 3 of the shots.

Rather amusingly, when taking the following photos by the road side, I noticed that the cars were driving a lot slower than they do normally, clearly mistaking me for some kind of speed cop. Now I finally know how Bruce Wayne feels.

*canal related pun

SNOW!

Oh my God! SNOW!!! Quick, panic buy! Bread, copious amounts of bread, buy it. And milk. More milk than is humanly possible to drink before it goes off. Petrol! Mustn't forget the petrol, to fuel the car to carry out the bread and milk salvage. Snow chains too... Should definitely get some of those this year. I heard it's going to be 10 cm deep. 10 cm! Ten centimeters! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Oh, wait... it's melting already.

I love snow. Call me childish, but I always get excited at the prospect of snow each winter time. Especially when it coincides with Christmas like it did last year (here in Britain). It almost makes the season bearable. I just love the look of it. Even the most aesthetically miserable places are cheered up by its glistening white icey coating.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the snow is going to be making a prolonged visit this year, which is why I'm glad I ventured out in it earlier with my camera. The sun was hidden behind clouds all day, so sadly there were no nice shadows or reflections to be taken in. Instead I messed around with long exposures and small apertures. As long and small as my camera will allow anyway, which isn't all that long or small as it happens. The ND filter however  helped to extend both as much as was possible in the available light.

As in my last post, the images were taken at Hay Wood, near Baddesley Clinton.

Keep to the Path!

A noble message, an amusing one too, displayed along the track leading up to the church near Baddesley Clinton encountered on my weekend walk.

But in terms of getting the best photographs, not the best advice God has ever decreed...
The best photos are often taken when you stray from the path and start to see things from a new perspective. As evidenced by a wander through nearby Hay Wood. It was a lovely frosty morning and the sky was clear, full of that excellent winter light which makes everything look so very fresh and picturesque.


I must have walked about three or four miles in and around the small one or two square mile section of woodland and taken over 200 pictures, and with almost every push of the shutter release I thought to myself "it's impossible to take a bad photo here". To the point where I felt I might be going a bit mad, like when you get a tiny section of a song you hate stuck in your head on a seemingly infinite loop.

Getting off the main pathways and into the heart of the forest provided the best photo opportunities. Unfortunately, a lot of them looked better through my viewfinder than they do on my 27 inch monitor... I'm certain this is God's way of punishing me for straying from the path. That or my 9 year old camera is starting to show its age. One of the two.

Here are some of the better ones-

Israel and Jordan.

Without wishing to turn this into a bog standard Blog about my life, writing about things that no one really cares about, I recently went to Israel for a holiday and wedding which I'd been invited to. I'd a great time and took lots of pictures. I even popped over the border to Jordan whilst I was there, which was initially terrifying, having been told by a number of Israelis not to go. "You go there, you don't come back alive!" we were warned. That turned out to be untrue, thankfully. Silly shit stirring Israelites! Although the blood stains at the border did nothing to calm my nerves during the crossing, the Jordanian people on the whole were exremely friendly and welcoming.

Below are some of my favourite pictures from the trip. For more images be sure to follow this link to my Flickr account.