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.

The Miami Sunset You Can't See

Film critics have often said that what you can't see in a scene, is often more important than what you can. Hitchcock was a master of this, though it was also used to great effect in the movie Se7en (I even wrote it like it is on the DVD). You know the 'What's in the box?!' bit at the end. I would write spoiler alert there, but if you haven't seen it now, well you really should have, it's nearly 20 years old. Now I know it's completely unartistic to point out features like this in your own work, but then I don't really think of myself as an artist, just a guy trying to capture the scenes of the world that capture my imagination. This will probably backfire on me one day, when I insist I want to be treated seriously as an artist, man. I think I'm way too grounded and down-to-earth for that though.

Miami in February is certainly a more attractive place to be than the British Isles, though I'm not an anti-winter person. It certainly has it's charm and beauty, though the typical day here is 9 times out of 10 a dreary, wet, overcast, cold one. I'm not a great fan of Big Brother (the TV series) but I could not help but LMAO (!) when Jermaine Jackson came to Britain a few years ago on Celebrity Big Brother, thinking it would be a snowy, fairytale-like land in the winter. Oh, when will the world learn!

So anyway, the beauty of being in Miami in January/February is the summer-like sunsets you can get, that are months away in Europe. I was lucky enough to be treated to a boat trip around the Miami Bay area the evening of this picture. As a photographer, this means you won't be getting the crispest, super sharp shots, but you can certainly get pictures that would not be possible from other vantage points. The sun was going down way over my right shoulder and was reflected beautifully in these 2 buildings. It took a while to grow on me I think, but it is perhaps now my favourite shot from my Miami trip. It is a single image, processed nearly entirely in Lightroom, with some minor clean up work done in Photoshop.

f/6.3 / 92mm/ 1/100sec / ISO 400

Palestine

The Middle East, one of the most tense places you could possibly be on Earth. I have said on a previous blog post that Palestine is perhaps not a place I would visit again. In fact, I was mocked at work the other day because I said it is not a country I would voluntarily go to, which was met with unsuppressed laughter of "but you did!". As dumb as it may sound, I really didn't! I had no idea that the tour we took from Sharm El-Sheikh to Jerusalem (The Holy Land tour) meant going to Palestine as well. I knew we were visiting Israel, and mainly Jerusalem, but I honestly did not know that Palestine was that close to it. I must state though, that it was perfectly safe to visit Palestine, and indeed if you want to visit the birth place of Christ (Bethlehem, for all you who have forgotten your Christmas nativity stories), then you have no choice but to visit Palestine, because that's where it is (likewise Nazareth, which is also associated with Jesus, is also in Palestinian territory, though we were told that it isn't safe to visit there at the moment).

I have also mentioned on a previous blog post that the tour we took was far from ideal for taking photographs, simply because we had so little spare time. So today's picture is rather like like a tourist picture I suppose (albeit one that took me ages to process), but is still a record of my travels there. This is looking away from the Church of Nativity and into the local town area of Bethlehem. It is a 3 shot HDR picture taken with a Nikon D90, processed in Lightroom, Photomatix, Photoshop and Topaz Adjust.

New blog name.....Again??!

Yes, you may have noticed that I have yet again changed the name of this blog. Having only just changed it to Home and Away (not influenced by the Aussie TV show), I have now changed it to the non-cryptic UK HDR Photography. Why? Well, because I have decided that the travel photography blog idea has been done to death, and I don't want to appear in the same vein anymore. Therefore, I want this blog mainly to be about what it mainly contains, which is HDR photography, whether from Britain or abroad. Of course, not every photograph will be an HDR, but this would be stated, and otherwise the blog name would just be Photography, which is unlikely to get me up in the Google rankings.

The Swan Hotel, Bibury

Something a bit closer to home now....Amidst the plenty of pictures I still have to post from Miami and Egypt, I wanted to post this picture of rural Gloucestershire, that I have been working on recently. The picture was taken almost 2 years ago, during the summer of 2011. I was staying at this fantastic hotel in the village of Bibury, and had the evening to walk round with camera and tripod (something I did not use a lot back then), taking pictures of the local area.

I know it's been said many times, but using a tripod I think is perhaps the single most simple advice you can give someone for taking better pictures. Having used a tripod on the evening I took this picture, means I can still get great sharp images from them now, and come back to them with post-processing skills I have developed over time. I did create an HDR of this back then (not published on any website) and though I was already well into my HDR journey, looking back it was still probably over-processed (too saturated) and not at all well cropped!

This is a standard 3 shot HDR picture, processed in Lightroom, Photomatix, Photoshop and Nik Color Efex Pro. Most adjustments, dodging and burning and stuff was done in Lightroom, with some spot-healing done in Photoshop. When using Photomatix these days, I would recommend turning down the Luminosity slider (I used to always have this fully to the right by default). A lot of HDR pictures these days are presented as more realistic, rather than the over-cooked HDR look there used to be, and I think that has a lot to do with turning down the luminosity slider.

New post coming over the weekend!

Jerusalem

Jerusalem, perhaps the most famous and legendary city to ever exist. Wars have been fought over Jerusalem for thousands of years and continue to do so. It has been completely destroyed and rebuilt twice during it's long history, and of course is a key pilgrimage sight for followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

With my Wife and I's holiday to Egypt recently, came the opportunity for an excursion to The Holy Land, with the main focus being Jerusalem. We sacrificed a trip to Cairo in favour of Jerusalem, which given the instability of the Middle-East region, was perhaps a sensible thing to do. Jerusalem is not always a safe and recommended place to visit. Despite the recent Revolution in Egypt, the Cairo tourist spots such as the Great Pyramid and Sphinx are unaffected by these troubles. Although we were delighted to visit Jerusalem, we were not big fans of the tour we went on. We were prepared for the hard work, as we were picked up in Sharm El-Sheikh at 9pm and returned midnight the next day (meaning a bus trip through the night), but we were disappointed that there were hardly any opportunities for free time to explore the old city of Jerusalem.

Of course, excursions and tourist tours are not the ideal way to get great photographs, but our experience from previous tours in Greece was very good. They gave us various explanations at places we stopped, but at the same time gave us plenty of time to explore and take pictures. Now we did pack quite a lot into our day in the Middle-East (Jerusalem, Palestine, the Dead Sea) but it was still a bit annoying that any photos taken were pretty much standard ones everyone else could get. This should not take away from the fact though that visiting Jerusalem was a very special and fascinating experience, that if times are good, I thoroughly recommend.

The picture you see of Jerusalem here is taken from the Mount of Olives perspective, which gives a wonderful view over the old city of Jerusalem. I do not want to call this an HDR, if I could invent a term for it, I would call it a semi-HDR. This is because my original picture is a standard single RAW image, but I created an HDR out of this single RAW file, to bring out more colour and detail. The final picture is the original image, with the HDR elements masked into the main architectural and old city parts. The picture was completed by eliminating the many cranes and other distracting features in the background.

Quick note: This is my first picture from the continent of Asia. Having visited as well Egypt (in Africa) and Miami (in North America), I now have pictures posted in 2013 from 4 different continents (including Europe of course)! Despite my fairly low output so far (this is going to change rapidly), I'm very chuffed with that fact!

Desert Camp Egypt

Well I have returned from an extraordinary week in Egypt, full of sunshine, snorkelling and plenty of travelling. I'm not the type on holiday to just sit by the pool, though there was a little bit of that. Unfortunately, a week in the sun can go oh so quickly, but we managed to pack quite a lot into that week. The most interesting part was travelling to Israel and Palestine, to visit The Holy Cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (not sure that is a city?), as well as a stop at the Dead Sea. So as you can imagine I have I hope plenty of photos to share, and rather than give you a whole transcript of the holiday right now, I will take each stage one at a time.

Today's picture was actually taken the day before we returned from holiday. After the exhausting trip to Israel and Palestine, we relaxed for a couple of days, but wanted to do a final excursion before returning to England. So we decided to do Camel Riding and Star Gazing in the desert. We had booked the trip through a vendor based outside the hotel and it began rather nervously, when we were collected from the hotel, by 3 men in what can only be described as a makeshift Derek Trotter minibus (blue not yellow though), complete with no ID and plenty of arabic writing inside. Having arrived at the desert and satisfied that we weren't being kidnapped, we did indeed enjoy a great evening of the previously mentioned activities, and also learned about the Bedouin (Egyptian Tribesman) lifestyle, as well as being entertained with various dances as well. So no this is not a camp in the military sense, but still a place you could easily enjoy the peace and quiet of the desert for the night. We were able to watch the sun going down from a good vantage point, and it was at this time that this photo was taken. It is a 3 shot HDR image, taken handheld with my Nikon D90.

I have been using the D90 a lot recently (for my Miami and Egypt trips), as opposed to the much bigger and better D700, simply because of the ease of travelling with it. I never planned to go back into shooting with the D90, and indeed it can be frustrating having to deal with issues again that are not a problem with the D700, such as low level light handling, and the amount of noise the D90 generates. Still, it is light, portable and has a VR (the anti-shaky thing) lens, as opposed to my 24-70mm lens I have for my D700, which is not. I look forward though now to going back to using the D700 on a regular basis, and with Spring approaching soon hopefully, will certainly be out and about getting some 'Home' pictures.

Dancing in Little Havana

The Cuban centre of Miami, with all due respect, Little Havana is perhaps not a place I would venture to again in a hurry. Having got a taxi ride from South Beach to Little Havana (which seemed worlds apart), the taxi driver dropped me off at a location, which meant I had to walk quite a distance to get to the main point where the tourists visit, such as the cigar-making shops in the centre. It wasn't the most secure walk I've ever had to make, and watching a news programme later on about how many guns were handed in that day as part of a guns armistice scheme, made me somewhat relieved I had not known how many guns were on the 'street' there in the first place.

However, Little Havana has tons of energy to it, and as well as the famous cigar shops where you can see them being rolled and made in front of you (picture of that coming up soon), there is also music always playing outside and people enjoying the atmosphere. These guys were happy for me to take their picture of this wonderful scene I came across in the centre of Little Havana.

It is a single image (not HDR) but I have used Topaz Adjust, as well as Lightroom, to give the scene a bit more energy and tone, than just a standard out-of-the-camera photograph. Tomorrow I am travelling to Egypt, so won't be back on this blog for over a week or so. I shall return with plenty of pictures still to come from Miami, and hopefully some good ones from Egypt!

Ocean Drive

Ocean Drive is the classic road along South Beach in Miami, that contains many of the famous Art Deco buildings, an iconic landmark of the city. I honestly did not know much about Art Deco until watching a video of Miami on the flight over, but in essence it is a row of hotels that date back to the 1920's and 30's, that are now of great historic interest.

Today's photo is not so much about Art Deco, but just a flavour of what Miami is about: the Spanish influence, palm trees, vintage cars and of course the beautiful weather. This was a well timed shot, as this car is not part of the diner behind it. It was parked there whilst waiting to be parked by the valet. The car in front of it waiting to be parked was a Ferrari (only in Miami!). This photograph is a single image and was processed entirely in Lightroom 4.

I have plenty more pictures to come from my time in Miami, and I know I have not been very good at putting them up. I will blog again tomorrow with a new picture from Miami, before I go away again on Thursday for another week....to Egypt. As I said last time, it looks like I can get back to the travel aspect of this blog this year.

Miami Nights

Writing this blog on a cold, English Monday morning, when last week I was in 28 degrees heat, walking on golden beaches and swimming in the bluest sea you've ever seen, is obviously quite depressing and not easy. I returned from the sunshine state yesterday, having been out there since last Tuesday. Although it was a business trip, it nonetheless provided a very welcome getaway from the English winter, something I have very rarely been able to do. Miami is a truly beautiful, and indeed cultural city, of which I had not really expected prior to my visit. It was a given that I would take a camera out there, to capture the city's sights in my 'offtime' from work, and so I took out the lighter and more portable D90, as opposed to the much bigger and hand luggage restrictor that is the D700.

I'm lucky to have taken quite a few pictures, of which should be able to fill up this blog for quite a while. Today's picture is one I took within a couple of hours of arriving in Miami. This was the view from my hotel room. Although it might be easy to be sad not to have a sea view, I was not complaining at all, as I immediately realised I would be able to get one of those nighttime city HDR shots, that I have seen of so many other cities. This is a traditional 3 shot HDR, taken in manual mode, and using the hotel balcony as a makeshift tripod, having not been able to take one out there myself. Processing a picture like this is a lot of fun, even after the Photomatix stage, because you can pick the best bits to include in the picture from the 2 HDR's I created (one de-ghosted and one not) and the original RAW files.

You will also notice today that I have changed the name of this blog to Pete Halewood - Home and Away. You may remember that last year my blog was called The Photographic World of Pete Halewood, which was a title based around the fact that I would have pictures to display from around the world. Due to my lack of travel last year though (in no small part due to my wedding and house move), I changed the name to Talking Photo with Pete Halewood. This year however, I hope to 'get out' a lot more, and this is why I'm confident enough to name this blog in part as an ode to my travels, but also to reflect the large numbers I will take in the UK. Today's picture is my first HDR taken in the USA.

Inside San Maggiore Giorgio

Venice hey, been a long time since I posted a picture from there. Well my Venice photos have been getting a lot of attention from myself recently. Probably because in the 2 years since it's been that I was there, I look back quite objectively at the pictures and think 'hmmmm, I would do this now', and then I realise that RAW files are not cast in stone and I can tweak them as needs be. I have even been making some slight adjustments to my Burano picture, one of my best known pictures (without trying to sound too disgustingly modest).

So why am I doing all this? Well 2 reasons actually. Firstly, because I bought a book recently on Amazon for a penny. Yes, you read that right, 1p (the delivery charge cost 240% more than the book). Why people try to sell books for penny I have no idea, but at least it means you can get hold of books, that would have been incredibly difficult to find elsewhere. The book I bought was called Charlie Waite's Venice. A book of photographs by one of my favourite photographers, taken in Venice. You probably had guessed that from the title though. The book was first published in 1989 and though there are many great and inspiring pictures in there, what surprised me was the amount of noise (film grain) present in many of the photos. This was obviously more acceptable then, as ISO was controlled by the type of film you selected, not in-camera like on modern DSLR's. It made me realise that most people are nuts if they don't believe that digital photography is an advancement over film. That much noise would just not be acceptable in today's photographs, I believe. Don't get me wrong, I do think film grain adds a fantastic quality to to some pictures, but the amount of noise present in other photographs, takes away from the overall quality.

I am digressing slightly, but the book did inspire to go back to my own pictures of Venice taken in April 2011. The second reason I have been going back to my Venice photos is because I am going to bring out an Ebook (though you can get in standard book form as well!) of Venice. It's the type of photographer's photography book I like; not too much on words and lots of great images (I hope you think anyway). The type of photography book Scott Kelby creates when he returns from certain destinations. I have always wanted to create these types of books as well. You may remember that I released a book (small though it is) last year entitled 'West Berkshire in HDR', so the Venice one will be my second published book.

Today's picture is one I think I originally posted on Flickr a couple of years ago, but I reprocessed it last year. This is the time I have posted the reprocessed version.