Winter Wonderlands

Saturday evening is here which means it's time for another blog from myself. I don't actually try to aim to post them on Saturday evening, but with things to do on Saturday, it's the first chance I get to post a blog.

As mentioned on Thursday, I have prepared some winter (or festive) pictures below, to celebrate the time of year. I stated that I had no new winter/christmas ones this year, which is true, but I'm quite inspired recently to try some Christmas Bokeh pictures, so might get one of them on this blog before Christmas.

A couple of the pictures below (Gainsborough Stud and red house winter picture) go wayyyyy back. Back as far as 2010 I believe, and though they may have appeared I think on Flickr, I don't believe they have appeared on one of my blogs. Further to that, the picture of Donnington Castle in the snow, I don't think I have posted anywhere at all. The Winchester Cathedral picture and The Winter Church have definitely appeared on here. So my last post before Christmas will be on Christmas Eve, but based on the possibilities of new pictures, I may post an additional blog as well.

The Winter Church

March is not the time of year I expect to be posting winter pictures full of snow, but then the English weather is not providing me many other opportunities at the moment. I take solace in the fact that I know the rest of Europe is pretty much plunged in winter still as well, at a time when most of us are hoping to see some spring. Such is life though, the weather is certainly something we cannot influence or change, so there is no point focusing on it that much.

Having grovelled a little there, I am secretly a bit thankful as well, as the snow allowed me to go up to the village I grew up in, Woolton Hill in North Hampshire, to take some pictures of the village church, or more specifically St. Thomas' Church. I don't normally have this opportunity during the week, so did not waste the opportunity presented on this Saturday morning.

Churches and Cathedrals I find are some of the hardest buildings to photograph. This is usually due to the fact that they are massive structures in sometimes small grounds, meaning that getting the whole church in the frame is a real challenge. For the angle I chose here, I had to (carefully) walk through the graveyard to set up in the corner of the grounds. The bonus of setting up there as well is that I was under some tress, which kept me and my camera fairly dry as I took pictures (as you can tell from the picture the snow was still coming down fast). This was not possible at other angles I took.

This is an HDR picture taken from 5 different exposures. There was a lot of work and time put into this picture, mainly in photoshop to rid it of ghostly artefacts (no pun intended there), clone out some bins and do general clean up work.

In Faith

This is another picture taken from my recent postcard project for the village I grew up in, Woolton Hill in North Hampshire. Whether they will use this one or not I have no idea, I have a feeling it's a bit too 'arty' to be appropriate for a postcard but I was quite pleased with the shot nonetheless. I took this outside St. Thomas' Church, the only place of worship in Woolton Hill. There have been quite a few Union Jacks popping up in many places this year, mainly because of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee but this flag was put up more than a week after those events had taken place, which I was a little perplexed about. It wasn't up the week before when I began taken pictures of the village, which was during the jubilee bank holiday. Nothing wrong with having a British flag up of course, was just a bit confused about the timing.

The stone cross it is next to is actually part of the war memorial that stands outside the church, to remember all the men from the village who died during the first world war. While not trying to use that as a tenuous link to talk about TV programmes, I always tell my fiancé she must watch Blackadder Goes Forth, which despite being a comedy programme is perhaps one of the most poignant pieces of television ever made about the first world war. It's most notably remembered for the final scene of the last episode but another part that always gives me goosebumps is the scene where Baldrick reflects on all the people who have been lost during the war and complains 'Why can't we just say no more war, let's just all pack up and go home, why would that be hard, tell me why?'. I know not every war is as simple as that but it always strikes a chord with me.

Postcard from Woolton Hill

Recently I mentioned that I have been given a project to create some postcards for the village I grew up in - Woolton Hill in north Hampshire. The criteria was that it should represent Woolton Hill in the summertime and being as the weather the last few weeks has been everything but summer, it has been quite a challenge! Luckily, we managed to have a warm period a few weeks ago and that is when I managed to capture most of the shots.

Today's picture is one I took just after I got my Nikon D700 and one I will be putting forward for the project. I'll be giving updates to how the project goes, it's in the next couple of weeks that I have to hand over the finished pictures and then let the organisers decide which ones they want to use. Once that has been decided, I will put all the pictures used on this blog.

I would just like to say thanks for all the support on this blog and other websites for my last picture 'Like a Setting Sun'. Definitely seems to have been quite a popular one. It has only got 45 views on Flickr (I always find it trickier to get views when it's a non-HDR) but of those 45 views, I have got 13 'favourites' which is a pretty good ratio I think. As I said, the view count always goes down when it's a non-HDR because I can't put it in all the HDR groups I normally do, so if anyone who uses Flickr has any ideas what other groups I can put it in, it would be much appreciated! I have put it in the common groups such as FlickrToday, FlickrCentral and FlickrAddicts, as well as Nikon specific ones (D700 group, Nikon Digital) but if there are any others people would recommend, please let me know.

Always a Way Out the Woods

Yes perhaps it is a bit of a metaphor on life, but for me this is one of those pictures that has been lying dormant on my hard drive for about 7 months. I remember processing this picture last summer, though being quite undecided about it and hence I have never posted it before. It's just one of those pictures that has grown on me over time, but also makes me miss the fabulous greens of summer! This is actually an area not far from where I live in Woolton Hill, North Hampshire, and it is one of those really boggy woodland areas that had to have this elevated wooden path added because even in the summer it is so wet and boggy. The woodland is actually much denser than the picture perhaps suggests, but I'm happy I managed to capture the sun breaking through between the trees.

This is an HDR taken from 3 shots, and though I can't remember exactly, I'm pretty sure it was largely processed in Lightroom. This was processed in my pre-photoshop days and while I still largely process in Lightroom, back then it was virtually all I did.