Lavenham and its Church

I suspect the medieval village of Lavenham in Suffolk is most rewarding to the summer day-tripper, but we made our way there on a crisp bloody freezing Sunday in January, which was perfect for photographing the impressive local church (which also yielded literary bounty in the form of a second hand book stall inside).

The layout of the church and grounds is pretty tog-friendly, with a variety of elements that lead the eye to the church itself.

The low winter sun played its part by creating a pattern of shadows along the path.

There was a touch of mist in the air, which encouraged a shot into the sun.

I don't go a whole hog on Photoshop's built in filter gallery, or sfx in general, but wanted to create a more dramatic sky for this vaguely gothic treatment of one of Lavenham's many period cottages. I selected the sky and reversed it for that 'negative' look. When doing this to a selection, a lot of attention is required around the border of the selection to ensure the transition is not too obvious.

No Photoshop tomfoolery in the next image, but I did want to emphasis the slightly crooked nature of the building, so stepped into the middle of the road with a wide angle lens set to its shortest focal length (for maximum distortion) and deliberately slanted the horizon.

Travelling light, I hadn't packed my macro lens, so had to make do with the wide angle at its longest focal length for this shot of frost-covered leaves in the grounds of the church. I left the colours in their RAW state (i.e. muted) and just tweeked a little bit of blue in with a LAB curve in the b channel.

Holiday Snaps Part II - The Gondoliers

Cities present as many photo opportunities as dramatic mountainscapes - none less so than Venice
.

I managed to grab pole position in our gondola - we were sharing with another couple and it could have got nasty (and wet) very quickly. Our rather grumpy gondolier told us not to move about in the gondola - I pretended not to understand English.
On a moving (albeit slowly) boat, camera settings are critical. I set the ISO as high as I dare on my D300 and switched to shutter priority mode so I could make sure to keep shutter speeds fairly quick in the relatively poor light between the high buildings.Scenes could be fairly contrastly where direct sunlight broke in, so frequent 'chimping' was required with the camera's display in histogram mode. The histogram is a more reliable way of judging under/over exposure than looking at the image itself.

The gondolier in front of us was very obliging when it came to striking some action poses. The fast shutter speed and medium ISO helped keep the action sharp.

Our gondolier was less obliging. I got the feeling his mind was elsewhere.

The next guy's mind was definately elsewhere. Candid shots of people doing uncharacteristic things can be much more interesting than shots of them doing what they're supposed to.

But sometimes the cliches work too. I probably couldn't have made this last shot if I'd been shooting JPG rather than RAW. Either the shadow to the side of the canal would have been too dense, or the area behind the bridge would have been blown out. RAW and the histogram view helped me get detail at both extremes without annoying my wife by taking ages over the shot.

Holiday Snaps Part I - Monochrome Italy

This is the first part of my rough guide to holiday snaps. There is nothing especially technical here - the last things most people want to think about on their hols are ISOs and f-stops - it's more a collection of ideas that can help you create more interesting travel memories that will fascinate your friends and family back home.

The locations featured here are the picturesque mountain-hugging village of Limone on Lake Garda, Italy, and the Dolomites (Dolomiti).

Mountains make for attractive photo opportunities, especially if you have a wide angle lens stuck on the front of your SLR - but look for foreground interest too - to give the landscape depth and perspective.

Look for subjects that help tell the story of the area, such as this statue of a cycle racer (many of whom you'll be able to wave to from the comfort of your vehicle as they sweat their way up the Dolomites).

When photographing statues, icons and the like, consider the surroundings - can they be used to tell a story, or add a bit of drama? Think about potential black and white conversions too; I always shoot in colour and convert later (as you can't recreate the colours if you shoot b&w), but here I knew that polarising the sky would create a nice deep blue that would convert to a dark dramatic grey using Photoshop's black and white tool.

Enjoy the grand vistas but don't forget to get in close and focus on some details too, or as above, make the background more abstract and moody.

When framing a shot, an object isolated on the horizon can make a good focal point. The tree in this shot also adds some perspective to the scene.

Backlit subjects can look pretty dramatic, but may test your camera's exposure meter. Take the camera out of 'auto' mode to be sure you're exposing as you wish - the camera could get a scene like this very wrong, depending on whether it exposes for the bright sky or the shadowy mountain side. Bracketing is a good idea for this type of scene - you can then pick the best shot later, or maybe merge elements of the different exposures together (if you keep the camera very still between shots i.e. use a tripod).

The courtyard above is nnother high contrast scene that might cause your auto-exposure mode to throw its hands up in the air. Shooting RAW allows you to reclaim shadow and highlight detail that JPG would lose - though even RAW has limits to how much can be saved.

Eveyone has their own 'signature' holiday pic - the type of quirky image you somehow manage to take wherever you go - mine is rooftops and aerials. Don't ask.

These last two images were shot through a coach window. I needed a fast shutter to avoid blur, but wanted to reduce reflections in the window too. I couldn't risk a polarising filter to remove the reflections, as I would lose too much light. Placing the lens very close to the window kept reflections to a minimum - just mind your glass!

The Garden (Part 2)

Images to complement and contrast the previous post; shot at the same time, but edited to create a very different effect.

Flowers on the Table

Just what the title says. Nothing about these images was 'set up'. I simply recorded ostensibly mundane scenes in order to present them in a slightly different light.
The blue tone of the first image, although slightly modified in PS, was captured in-camera by setting the white balance to 'tungsten'.
I never shoot black and white in-camera though. Doing so limits your options in two ways:

Firstly, the camera determines how the various colour are rendered into black and white. You can take some control back with filters, but more glass (or plastic) in front of your sensor risks reducing the quality of the image slightly.

Secondly, You might like the image in colour as well as black and white, when you see it on a big screen. Converting images from colour to black and white is easy, but if you discard the colour data in-camera, you cannot get it back.

Somewhere In Time

Some simple experimentations with Hollywood glamour from a bygone era. The lighting for these images primarily consisted of monoblocs with snoots, grids and barndoors attached. The last image was part of an experiment that still needs some work. I used an old slide projector to cast the shadow of the cat figurine on the grey seamless background; this wasn't ideal as the light from the projector wasn't very powerful. I tried the same with flash but it didn't produce such defined shapes, even with a snoot - probably the light bounced around to much off the shiny gobo. This meant relying on a slower shutter speed than I normally use for portrait sittings - again, not ideal since I prefer to avoid the tripod for such shoots. The lighting on the model had to be carefully arranged so as not to fall on the background or cast a sadow of the model on the background.
The model is the delightful Clara Sinclair. The background was going to be the shadow of some dried roses that I had kept intact for well over a year, but I tripped over them, and now they're potpourri. Ho hum.