Antonio Vivaldi Museum

I've been very busy this week completing my pictures for the Woolton Hill postcard project and seeing old friends, and I haven't had much time for photo processing. So I've decided to do something I have not done for a while and that is post one of my (self-professed) 'classics'.

It's good timing that this picture comes onto the blog because it's about time I added a bit of an international aspect back to the website. Venice is not short of significant historical figures and right up there with the best known is the classical composer Antonio Vivaldi. The museum dedicated to him in Venice is actually quite small but worthwhile nonetheless. The instruments on display were used during the time of Vivaldi or perhaps indeed by the maestro himself.

This is an HDR from a single RAW file. I wanted to do a 'real' HDR but the room was just too dark (whilst using the camera without a tripod) to capture the brighter exposures. They came out too blurry. With the emergence of even more photo software, it's one I have always thought about revisiting and may attempt to fix the blurry RAW files but that project is for another day. This picture never lacked attention as it is on websites such as Flickr and is always one that pleases people at exhibitions I have held.

Graceful Grebes

When I was in my teens, I was hugely interested in the natural world and spent many hours watching wildlife documentaries. As a result, I would often wander about in British countryside, hoping to spot some creatures or birds of some kind. This is how my original interest in photography began all those years ago, but obviously had no idea what it would take to get fantastic animal pictures. The necessary equipment then would have been well beyond my financial grasp.

Years later, when I found a new passion for photography, I started to get re-excited about the idea of getting great wildlife pictures. Having owned a DSLR's now for over 2 years makes me realise though how difficult and expensive those shots are. Before I got my D90 in 2010, I bought a Panasonic FZ38 which although was a point and shoot camera, had a ridiculously large zoom on it that went to 500mm. To afford such a luxury on DSLR (and the noticeable difference in quality that would give) would at it's very basic set you back £1000 and standardly many times that. I still have the passion for wildlife photography but know that there has to be hard work in other areas of photography before the day I can get the really close shots I desire.

The birds you see in this picture are Great Crested Grebes, which I pictured within the grounds of Hever Castle. They are famous for having an elaborate and graceful courtship display prior to mating and this is what this couple were doing. This isn't the pinnacle of the display, which involves them presenting 'gifts' to each other but I think I kind of scared them off while standing there taking pictures. Oh well, when I have that huge zoom range, I won't need to bother them again!

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.

Like a Setting Sun

And now for something completely different! I always try and state emphatically when I post a non-HDR picture on here, that my goal in photography was never to be exclusive or predominantly HDR and the thought always still occupies my mind. A lot of people who get into photography these days do naturally find themselves gaining a particular passion for HDR, because it provides something new and interesting in the modern photographic world. I still think most people gain a passion for photography first and then develop an enthusiasm for HDR afterwards. My goal has always been to produce pictures that are somewhat artistic and HDR is obviously a great method for achieving that, but if I get the look by other means, then I'm still just as happy.

One of the advantages of having my D700 and the F2.8 lens is that it allows me to get reasonably close to a particular subject and create a great bokeh effect in the background. I took this picture while out rambling along the hills of Combe in Berkshire, mainly famous for the gallows that once stood there. It's a fantastic place to get good sunsets and that was my aim on Monday night. The sunset itself was a bit hit and miss, there was a fantastic glow of red below the sun, but the mist and the clouds were too thick to get a stunning effect. Therefore, I tried something different. I always remember there being good opportunities to get close up to the wheat grass and use the sunlight to highlight the effect, as this early Flickr picture of mine shows. The sun wasn't that bright on Monday but I still tried to get some abstract shot of the glow of the sun in the background behind the moving wheat grass. What you see today is the result of that and this was processed entirely in Lightroom.

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.

The Castle Hever

It seems a bit of a 'safe' picture to go for today but nonetheless here is a closeup HDR picture of Hever Castle. I was working on a different picture for a little while but feel like I hit a 'wall' with that one. I'm sure other photographers know what I mean, you process a picture for so long but still can't quite find that something missing from the picture. So rather than post a picture I'm not entirely happy with, I put it to one side to come back to at a later date. More on that should I find that missing something and post that picture! This obviously did not quite pose so many processing headaches, though it took me a while to correct some imbalances with the different areas of the sky. It's an HDR from 2 exposures (0, -2) and processed in Lightroom, Photoshop and Viveza 2.

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!).

Victoria's Lions

Having struggled a couple of months ago to find new pictures for this blog, I now find myself with a fair few new pictures to choose from. Unlike the intention of this blog, most pictures that will be posted in the near future will all mainly be from the UK. I stated this at the start of the year, when I let it be known that due to a house move and getting married in September, foreign travel this year was going to be difficult. I am visiting Poland twice in the next 4 months (once to get married), so that will provide more opportunities for 'global' pictures and if I am lucky, I plan to visit 2 more countries by the end of the year as well, but we will see how things go.

Today's picture is another one I took while out looking for Diamond Jubilee pictures to capture around Newbury last week. I have lived in the Newbury area (with a few years in-between living in Cheltenham) for the best part of 27 years and have never come across this statue in a local park before. That's rather embarrassing as the park is called Victoria Park but I never realised there was a statue of Queen Victoria within it. At least it proves there are still gems to be found near your local area if you look hard enough (or open your eyes at all in my case). This is another HDR picture taken from 5 exposures on my new Nikon D700. I added a tiny bit of Topaz Adjust to the statues and used the glamour glow (very slightly) and cross balance filters in Nik Color Efex Pro 4.

The Old Farmhouse

Luckily we had a small break in the blanket cloud cover we have had in England the last couple of weeks, for me to capture this picture yesterday. This came out of a project I have been given recently to take some pictures for postcards of Woolton Hill, which was the village I grew up in. The brief was to capture Woolton Hill in summertime and I was fortunately able to complete most of the pictures a few weeks ago when we had a heatwave. The brief sunny weather yesterday allowed me to complete the pictures I intended to get for this project.

This farmhouse is actually just outside Woolton Hill near a neighbouring village called East Woodhay. I don't think I will be using this picture for the project, mainly because it's obviously somebody's property and I would in a normal world, probably need permission to print. I was intrigued by this scene though as I was driving round narrow country lanes, hoping that a scene would jump out at me. It would have perhaps looked more perfect at sunrise but I'll plan that one maybe for another time!

The Circus is in Town

My first HDR to have been created using my D700, this was another picture taken amongst the Jubilee celebrations last weekend. I stated on Tuesday that Newbury didn't seem to offer much in terms of Jubilee celebrations but there was a circus that rolled into town for the long weekend. I recently had a discussion regarding art with a lady during which I stated that 99% of all the photographs I take are not pre-visioned in my head. There have been some in the past such as my Building a Newbury Sunset that I already had a pre-conceived idea about, weeks before I took it. But that is rare. Most of the time I turn up to locations and events to get inspired by what is around me and let the ideas crop up in my head then. This circus box office wagon is an example of an idea that gripped hold of me once I spotted it. Having noticed there was a circus in the area (the noise from the rehearsals attracted me), I wanted to find a good photographic opportunity to capture the uniqueness of the circus. Most of the area was for the time-being closed off but obviously the ticket sales wagon wasn't and after the punters had stopped buying tickets for a moment or two, I simply took some snaps of this fantastic box office.

On an artistic note, I deliberately decided to keep the noise of the sky in the picture, though at the same time softening it. I don't normally go for a really gritty look in Photomatix but because of the rain that was coming down at the time, it worked so much more for this picture than a clean look. Keeping the noise in kept the picture consistent on all levels.

A final note; my new D700 doesn't take pictures like my D90 does in 2 stops intervals (if you want it to) but only does them 1 stop at a time. Therefore, to get the usual -2 to +2 range, I have to shoot 5 exposuress but thats ok because it gives me more pictures and therefore options to play with in post-processing. So this is an HDR from 5 different bracketed shots.