Author Archives: athyfoto

Play time

On Thursday we were out on the east coast at Robin Hood’s Bay, just south of Whitby. It is a very small village with an access road that would suit mountain goats far better than me! The weather was reasonably warm but not at all bright but it was still full of people looking around. I couldn’t settle on anything to shoot so went along the sea wall. I found a scene that I wanted to capture but I just wasn’t happy with what I was getting. So I kept the images anyway and decided to process them as single image HDRs. This is not something I am particularly a fan of but sometimes they can work when there is a lot of texture in the picture.

Anyway here are three shots I have worked on from the day out.

Sea Wall

Sea Wall

Old Tractor

Old Tractor

Detail Triptych

Detail Triptych

Walking across the water

This is my son walking across the River Wharfe without getting his feet wet! We were in Upper Wharfedale, near to Yockenthwaite, and the weather had been fine and the river was almost a dry limestone bed. I was perched on one of the limestone rocks in the middle of the river with a Nikkor 18 – 70mm at the 18mm end on my D300. Post was in LR5 and SEP2.

Walking across a very low River Wharfe

Walking across the River Wharfe

Recycling an old flower

This image of a flower starting to unfurl it’s petals wasn’t made in the mid 19th century from a wet plate negative. It is one of my own that I made using Nik’s Analog Efex Pro after running it through Topaz Clean 3 and applying skin smoothing! I did the skin smoothing because I wanted to soften down the detail in the petals and this gave me the look I wanted. I won’t trouble you with the ‘recipe’ that I used because to be honest it was a bit of an organic process, by which I mean I was switching and swapping settings with my eye on the screen and not on a notepad where I could have made notes to help me replicate it. But that would have been a bit like painting by numbers as opposed to painting in a free and loose fashion, moving paint onto and around the canvas and watching things develop.

The original shot was in full colour and was one that I took along as part of a portfolio of images to a Royal Photographic Society distinctions advice day in Manchester. I was advised to ditch this one, probably good advice as I subsequently achieved my LRPS with my revised panel.

But I really don’t like deleting images just for the sake of space and usually keep nearly everything. I brought this one out again recently and reworked it and came up with this version. I like the outcome and may have it printed up.

Unfurling petals

Unfurling petals

Hanging around Skipton

This picture was captured while trying to see if there was a view down from the Castle’s grounds into the mains shopping street in Skipton. I couldn’t find a clear shot and was peering through the viewfinder when this hang glider floated (glided?) into view . . CLICK! I was using a 18 – 300mm lens at about 150mm so the scene is slightly compressed but the fellow dangling from strings attached to a piece of fabric high above the town gives a sense of scale. It scares me just looking at him.

A hang glider drifting by high above Skipton

Just floating by

Take a seat

High above Muker in Swaledale one April afternoon we happened across this bench with a view. Not a soul in sight, not a sound to be heard except for the wind that was blowing relentlessly. It was about 5:30 in the afternoon and the wind made it feel like a mid winters day and the sky did it’s best to reinforce the feeling. But the view overcame any discomfort.

While the view is timeless the bench, along with a sort of cairn just out of shot to the left, is not. There is a plaque on the cairn that simply says, “Muker Parish 2000”. What else would you need to know?

I struggle to understand how it is that a lot of people like to be hustled and bustled in a town or city where you need to crane your neck just to see the sky when there are places like this where you can hear yourself think and where the wind blows away the cobwebs. On the other hand if it weren’t the case then I would probably struggle to find a place to sit on this bench. On the way from here into Wensleydale we actually saw a motorcycle, and a car! Sheesh . . . . you just can’t avoid the traffic anywhere these days 🙂

A bench with a view over Swaledale

Plenty of room on top!

A misty old day

Here are a few shots I took of trees on a misty old day. I like the serene feeling whenever I get the opportunity to be among the trees on a quiet, damp, misty day. Click any image to see slide show of the images.

 

Working for peanuts

I was watching the birds flocking around some feeders that are set up near to a hide. It was a very dull day and it was raining which was the main reason I ended up in the hide, just for shelter. I fired off a few frames and I really liked the painterly effect that I was lucky enough to capture when this Great Tit was just about to lift off with his peanut in his beak.

A Great Tit at a bird feeder

Which one shall I have?

 

A Great Tit takes off with a peanut in his beak

Lift Off!

Eleven arches and no roof

Henry’s men made a real hatchet job during the dissolution of what was one of the wealthiest Abbeys in England in its day. This is a view that until very recently was obscured, almost completely, by trees. I was high above Fountains Abbey on one of the main paths to the Abbey where the National Trust has cleared and re-opened views that haven’t been seen clearly for a long time. Well done the N.T.

A picture of part of Fountains Abbey

Eleven arches

Fake Flower Natural Light

I have, for the last two or three weeks, been suffering like MANY others from the effects of a virus that has kept me indoors coughing and sneezing and generally feeling sorry for myself. For a photographer this is not good and cabin fever set in early on. This bug hospitalised my sister with pneumonia so I should count my blessings I suppose.

We have some beautiful flowers in the living room, yellow roses and purple lillies, that are crying out to me to photograph them. However I was sitting in the conservatory and watching the way the sunlight was creating shadows from the blinds. The shadows came in soft and then strengthened to deep black and then melted away as the clouds exposed and obscured the sun. So I decided to set up this little still life shot. Instead of using the flowers I thought it would use the natural light on a fake flower so I placed a little wooden tulip into a porcelain vase.

I processed the picture using Silver Efex Pro 2 applying a high contrast preset as a starting point. Emulating Ilford PAN F Plus 50 film with slightly accentuated grain and finally applied a slight copper tone to finish. It helped to pass a few minutes and it made me feel better, which is what photography should do 🙂

Natural Light on a Fake Flower

Natural Light on a Fake Flower