Winterbourne Church

Yesterday I had some spare time on my hands, so I decided that as the evening sky was looking quite promising, I would just go out in my car and see what I could find. In fact, a lot of my photography is achieved that way. Yes I do have day trips planned now and then, but by and large a lot of my photography (especially this year) is done by just deciding I will go out and find something to capture.

I took some pictures around central Newbury, which I know I have covered quite a lot but it's not so much the locations I am interested in anymore, rather than the scene I come across at one particular time. I used to think great photography meant travelling far to capture great scenes but I know now that isn't true. I've seen many great pictures that could have been taken absolutely anywhere, such was the scene captured rather than the location. The sky was looking increasingly dramatic, so I decided to venture out of a Newbury a bit to find a great vantage point to capture the setting sun amongst the sky. I stumbled across the village of Winterbourne, which I have only been to once before (great pub restaurant there!). I saw some signs that lead to the church that was a little bit out of the village and felt that might be an interesting place. It was a nice if perhaps not perfect location, so I took the opportunity to take various pictures while around this church and found this picture to be one of the better results.

I have talked quite a bit recently about my new D700 but one thing that is a massive advantage to me with this camera, is being able to keep lots of detail in the picture, without having to add too much noise reduction. On single photos, even in lowlight conditions, the noise is hardly noticeable, but as you add exposures together for an HDR it becomes a little bit noticeable. Tackling this with some noise reduction kit (Topaz Denoise is my preferred choice) does not affect detail of the picture though, barely at all. This was not the case with my D90.