A Beautiful Path

Well that's what I remember thinking while I was there anyway! I don't have much time on my hand to write today but here is a new photo as always on a Tuesday. Haven't missed a blog day yet and though sometimes I push myself for time (like today), the photos keep coming. Like the last 2 photos, this one also comes from within the grounds of Hever Castle (I just realised that now and will change that on Thursday!). I've said it on this blog before but Hever really is a stunning place and well worth a visit. The castle is superb but for me the highlight are the magnificent gardens. This path and these flowers are part of that magnificence.

Gods in Gardens

Some pictures just lend themselves to HDR and I think this is one of them. Perhaps it is the stone scenery but I didn't feel like I had to wrestle with the sliders much in Photomatix to get the look I wanted here. This was taken a few weeks ago while visiting Hever Castle in Kent. It is another feature of the magnificent gardens they have at Hever. This was taken with my D90 and though I have a D700 now, there are still plenty more pictures to come from the last month or so of my D90.

I took 3 bracketed shots for this picture and made some slight adjustments to the RAW images before saving them as TIFF files and merging them in Photomatix. Although as I said this to me is quite a natural looking HDR, I still added some filters in Nik Color Efex to give it a slightly soft and desaturated look (beyond just moving the saturation slider to the left in Lightroom).

I have no idea by the way whether this is a Roman or Greek god that is being represented here but I would guess some kind of Roman one. Just a quick joke before I go; I don't want to be remembered in some grandiose way after I die, I would just like the word 'Humble' written on my statue....(sorry!).

HDR Waterfall

I was going to write a post today about the new camera I have bought, which is a Nikon D700. I had it all planned out that I would post my first picture from my new camera today and write a blog about why I came to the decision to buy this camera (and perhaps more importantly why I didn't buy the newly released D800). However, for the 2 days I have owned the D700, the weather in England has reverted to type and it has been absolutely miserable. I'm obviously not going to take my new camera out in the rain and haven't felt inspired to capture anything anyway. I'm hoping to capture some pictures of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations over the bank holiday weekend (if the weather clears up), so maybe that D700 post will be raring to go on Tuesday. We shall all see!

Instead, I offer you today a picture of this waterfall (hey they don't have to be big!) that I pictured within the grounds of Hever Castle. And yes it is in glorious HDR! You don't see many of them?! I was quite impressed with myself (you don't have to be) to get this shot, as it was taken handheld and auto-bracketed using 3 exposures. I'm glad the waterfall isn't too smooth, as I like the little flowing details you can see and the light gleaming off the water as well. Used a little Nik Color Efex Pro magic to get the final touches, as well as the usual processing in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Tudor England

I like to think that historical pictures are one of my specialities in the photographic and HDR worlds and it certainly is my ambition to use my imagination to present scenes from our past. Opportunities I have had in the past such as attending civil war battle reenactments are certainly a way that I can capture a bit of historical magic and I'm constantly looking for other ideas to present history in photographic form. HDR processing helps enormously as well because for me it has always been the artistic look HDR can give to photos rather than 'capturing the entire light range' that makes HDR so special. It really helps give pictures an extra dimension and although of course I love standard photography, HDR provides more opportunities I feel to create an artistic look.

The location in today's picture is again within the grounds of Hever Castle, with the focus of this one being the Tudor Village that lies behind the castle. Now this part of Hever Castle does not actually date back to the Tudor period (1485 - 1603 for the historian buffs like me) but was created in the 20th century to house extra guests that would be staying at Hever Castle. You're not allowed to walk round it either, nowadays I believe it is specially reserved for weddings and other events. Therefore, I got this picture while stood by the castle, whilst looking towards the Tudor Village. I found it quite intriguing that there was a boy who was in and out of this boat by the village and felt this would look good as part of the picture. I'm sure he works for the castle but luckily was not wearing any kind of uniform that would look out of place in this picture.

Processing wise, this is an HDR picture taken from 3 shots and after a lot of painstaking work, I merged in a texture from a rock that I also pictured from within the grounds of Hever Castle. In the final image I did think about going a bit lighter on the texture but then I lost the authentic historical look of the buildings, which I was not prepared to sacrifice, therefore I kept the strong texture look in.