BLOG ARCHIVE
Misty Layers | Weekly Photo #95
An undulated Sussex landscape taken during sunrise, interwoven with mist and trees.
I’m sure I’m not wrong when I say all creatives experience phases of feeling uninspired at some point and I’m no different. In fact, I’m feeling a little like that right now. Being in between the cold, frosty scenes of winter and the colourful, vibrant scenes of spring means I’m not as motivated to photograph my local woodlands right now and that coupled with being unable to freely travel into London to capture cityscapes means the camera has remained in the bag far more than I would like over the last few weeks.
But that doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing at all. Being out in the woodland is still important to me, with or without the camera so along with my trusty canine sidekick, I’ve still made a point to get out and use the time effectively, keeping an eye out for those early signs of spring and scout the best locations to photograph when spring really starts to kick into gear.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 116mm | 1/40th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Some of you may recognise this photo as I’ve been using it as a banner on my homepage for a while now and I thought it was about time I added it to my Weekly Photo series.
After scouting this area a few times, waiting for the conditions to be right, I was up and out before sunrise on this morning back in September 2020 to take a photo of the wild heather that had recently come into bloom. Having arrived before sunrise, I went about searching for the best composition to photo the heather and as I searched, I noticed the mist down the hill in the distance and decided to include it in the photo. You can see and read more about that photo of the heather and mist in a post I called Late Summer.
When I was done taking photos of the heather, the light was still nicely defused and I realised I still had time to wander closer towards the hillside to photograph this view of the undulated landscape interwoven with drifting mist moving from right to left through the scene. Noticing the light bouncing off the top of the trees was becoming increasingly brighter, I figured I only had a couple of minutes before it became too strong, creating too much contrast in the scene so I quickly found my spot, set up the tripod and placed the camera on top.
I chose my 55-200mm telephoto lens as I wanted to zoom right in and focus on a smaller area of the landscape. With a wider lens, I wasn’t going to get the effect I wanted which was to emphasise the front to back layers of mist and trees in the landscape, becoming softer through the scene, adding a sense of depth into the photo. To help the composition further, I placed the higher, more prominent trees on the upper third to create a subtle focal point for the eye to rest on.
The sky had a warm pastel tone to it and I wanted to include some of that in the photo but being a clear morning, there was very little interest up there so by leaving just a slither of the sky at the top of the frame, I could still get the effect I wanted without introducing too much empty space into the picture. With time not on my side, I manually focused on the trees on the top left-hand third and with the settings dialled in, I took the shot.
Back on the computer at home, I was careful not to add too much colour and contrast into the image as I wanted to reflect the quiet, relaxed feeling I got while out there on the side of the hill. With some considered local adjustments and a tweak of the white balance to warm the photo up a touch, I’m extremely pleased with how this photo has turned out.
I can’t quite believe my 100th weekly post is just around the corner. I feel I should do something to celebrate the milestone. Maybe a print giveaway competition or something similar. I’ll have a think about that!
Next week, I’ll be posting a sunrise photo I took of Eastbourne Pier on the Sussex coast last year and if you don’t want to miss it, why not subscribe to my newsletter by clicking on the link below. That way a new story like this will automatically drop into your inbox every Monday so you never miss a thing.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
A Modern Classic City | Weekly Photo #94
A blue hour London cityscape featuring both classic and modern architecture.
I’ve been a bit busy this week as I decided to start a small printing project. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may already know how strongly I feel about getting photos off the hard drive and on to paper and taking it one step further, how much I love a good photobook. I’ve brought a few photography books over the last year, written by some of my favourite landscape photographers and like nothing more than finding a quiet spot and reading the stories, admiring the photos, and drawing inspiration from their work. If you’re still on the fence about the benefits of printing, check out this post I wrote called Why Every Photographer Should Print Their Photos.
I decided to embark on a small personal project to design and print my own book. I could have gone down the easier route and uploaded the photos and use the software on offer from the print lab but where’s the fun in that? By using some of my photos and stories I’ve written on my blog, I’ve decided to download a copy of Adobe’s InDesign, learn how to navigate the application and design my own book from scratch. I’ll design the layout, the cover, type and prepare around 70 images ready to send to the lab to produce the final book.
It will take some time to complete, but at the end of the process, I hope to be holding the finished book in my hand as a bit of a keepsake and as a bonus, have learned a new skill by using InDesign to build the book from scratch. It’s still early days but I’ll keep you posted on how I get on.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 25mm | 13 Seconds | f/13 | ISO200
I took this photo while out in London with my camera back in September 2020. It was a wet, cloudy day and I had spent much of the afternoon photographing the city in the pouring rain, using the wet surfaces and puddles to find interesting compositions of London. It’s on this day I took one of my favourite photos of 2020 called Rainy City.
As it started to get dark, I ventured over to my intended viewpoint just along the river from St Katherine Docks in East London. I found a spot on the north bank of the river which provides a fantastic view of the classic architecture of Tower Bridge with The Shard behind it, which is itself, fast becoming a modern classic. Even though The Shard is considerably taller than Tower Bridge, it’s position, set back from the bridge, adds some much-needed visual weight to the left-hand side of the scene, helping to balance the composition.
With the water taking up much of the bottom half of the photo, I wanted to fill the empty space with the bright reflections from the city lights, but with the ripples in the water, it looked far too busy for my taste. To remove the ripples, I closed the camera’s aperture down to f/13, which in turn, increased the shutter speed to 13 seconds, resulting in a longer exposure, smoothing out the water, giving the final photo a more calm, relaxing look about it.
Once I had the RAW files loaded into Lightroom, I started off with the usual contrast and colour adjustments. I then cooled the temperature down to help with the orange cast created by the city lights and using some local adjustments, dodged and burned parts of the image to help emphasise the lights and darken the pier to the right, making it less distracting. I’m quite happy with how the final photo has turned out.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Forest Glow | Weekly Photo #93
A woodland photo with a defused, dappled light casting a warm glow across the Scots Pine Forest.
Hi everyone. With the positive effects of the vaccine rollout starting to show, I’m feeling an increased sense of optimism that we are slowly but surely beating this nasty virus and although by far the most important goal is to save lives, I feel I can now start planning for some Spring and Summer adventures both with friends and family and of course, with my camera! Last year, we were told to stay indoors just as Spring came into bloom and with the UK stay at home order set to be removed on March 29th, I’m now eagerly planning some local landscape and woodland photography adventures in the hope to capture the most vibrant season of the year.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 82mm | 1/8th Second | f/10 | ISO200
For the majority of my photo outings, I head out alone. Don’t feel sorry for me because, honestly, I’m fine with it and in most cases prefer it this way. I love to meet up with other photographers and talk photography, sharing tips and tricks but to me, the quiet, personal pursuit of a photograph is in fact my therapy and a kind of filter to the noisy and frantic lives we all live. I actually wrote a bit about this in a blog post back in 2019 called Mental Health and Why Photography Matters where I list some of the positive effects, I think photography has on mental wellbeing.
That being said, even when alone I do like it when people approach me, curious as to what I’m photographing, showing a genuine interest in what I’m doing. It can be a great way to connect with local people and just have a nice chat about the local area. For someone like me, always on the lookout for new places to photograph, it can be a great source of local information that only a few people might know about, which is exactly what happened while I was out taking this photo in my local forest. As I was taking a panoramic image of the woodland, a man walking his dog stopped for a chat, genuinely interested in what I was photographing and I could see he had a real passion for the surrounding area. We must have been talking for 20 minutes and he was more than happy to run through a list of places and viewpoints I might be interested in photographing, some of which sounded really interesting. Eventually, he happily went on his way but I was really glad he stopped by for a chat.
I had the camera mounted on my tripod in portrait mode, ready to take a wide panoramic photo of this Scots Pine woodland. With the slightly defused, dappled light casting a warm glow across the forest, I levelled off my tripod and while panning from left to right, took around 12 overlapping photos ready to stitch together later in Adobe Lightroom.
Another great tip when creating these high-resolution panoramic photos is that you can crop them to create multiple different photos while still having plenty of resolution left in the final photo. The resulting stitched panoramic photo ended up being a hefty 80 megapixel and even the cropped version above is 33MP, which is still plenty big enough for me to make a large print for the wall.
Although it won’t come across too well on the screen, here is the original panoramic photo which is best viewed on a larger screen.
Next week, I’ll be posting a night cityscape I captured of Tower Bridge in London last year and if you don’t want to miss it, why not subscribe to my newsletter by clicking on the link below. That way a new story like this will automatically drop into your inbox every Monday so you never miss a thing.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Winter Oak | Weekly Photo #92
A wintry looking English Oak smothered in a fresh white hoar frost.
Spring is just around the corner and I for one am looking forward to getting out into the great outdoors more often as the UK starts to tentatively lift the current restrictions we are under. Things are looking up! So, I thought I would wrap up the winter season with one last frosty landscape scene I managed to capture in a local woodland during a rare but incredibly beautiful hoar frost back in January.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 46mm | 1/160th Second | f/11 | ISO200
It had been a fantastically productive morning photographing the woodland not too far from where I live. The conditions were simply amazing as I had both mist in the air and a stunning, white hoar frost on the trees. I had started my morning a couple of hours earlier at this very spot and took a similar composition with the dominant tree silhouetted by a thick fog before heading into the woods to see what other photos I could take with a little help from these fantastic shooting conditions. You can see two other photos I took at the end of this post in my winter wrap-up.
As I returned to this spot a little later, the mist had almost cleared, making way for a bright, sunny, albeit freezing cold day and the clear blue sky with the white hoar frost on the trees and plants created this cold, fresh looking scene you see here. With this interesting English Oak standing tall, giving the composition a clear, central focal point, out came the camera ready to take this last photo of the morning.
Climbing to higher ground to avoid too much of the messy foreground, I set the tripod up with my Fujifilm XT2 camera and 18-55mm lens mounted on top. Looking through the viewfinder while composing the shot, something was off. The scene was too warm in camera and nothing like what I could see with my own eyes. As I shoot RAW and not Jpeg, I know I can correct the white balance in post, but with a simple switch to a daylight white-balance on the back of the camera, I could see these cool, fresh tones once again as I took the shot. A tip to remember going forward for sure!
I snapped away, taking a few wider compositions, then I changed the lens and zoomed all the way in to get a close-up, focusing on just the top half of this bare English Oak and those interesting branches that were fanning out from the top of the tree’s trunk. After I had all the pictures I wanted to take safety on the memory card, I packed up and headed home, grateful to be out of the cold with a nice hot brew.
To finish, I thought I would share a bit of a recap on some of the wintry themed posts I’ve written over the last few weeks, just in case you missed any.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
London’s Pinnacle | Weekly Photo #91
This week, I share this photo of The Shard taken from up at London’s Sky Garden back in October 2020.
Hi there. Before reading about this week’s photo, I want to tell you about the latest blog post on my website. A few days ago, I posted my 2021 “What’s in my camera bag for landscape photography” blog post. Not only can you read about all of the gear I use while out in the field taking photos, but I also share my thoughts about why buying the latest and greatest camera equipment isn’t always a shortcut to taking better photos. Click on the thumbnail below if you want to read the post.
Now, on to this week’s photo. I briefly mentioned this front-facing photo of The Shard on a previous post called Cloudburst Over London, where I was up at the Sky Garden Viewing Platform at the end of the day taking photos of a moody looking London in October last year. In the post, I talked about how the rain and wind that arrived not long after taking these photos meant the outdoor area was closed, putting a halt to any further photography for the evening. Thankfully, only minutes before the heavens opened, I had just enough time to take this wide-angle photo of The Shard across the river.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/6th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
There is so much I like about this photo. First up, the foreground made up London’s streets and rooftops which, apart from adding some interest into the lower third of the photo, act to lead the eye up and into the scene. When taken at10mm, not only does it allow much more of the foreground and sky to be included in the frame but the wide-angle changes the perspective. It appears to push The Shard further back into the distance, making it look smaller in the frame, but I still think it really works here. The Shard may look smaller but I think it loses none of the scale and remains the pinnacle structure, towering over its neighbouring buildings.
It’s the sky in the scene that really sets the mood here and I absolutely love how it looks in this photo. As I made my way to the Sky Garden, the sky was flat and featureless but not too long after arriving, a blanket of rain made its way in from the west and although it eventually put a stop to the shoot, thankfully it brought some welcome drama to my photos beforehand.
Lastly, amongst the monotone grey/blue colour of the overall picture, I really like the spots of colour throughout from the orange lights dotted around the buildings, the red London Buses crossing London Bridge, the blue lights representing our COVID heroes on top of The Shard and finally the last light from the sun piercing through a gap in the clouds and bouncing off the side of The Shard. Individually subtle but collectively, they make a big difference.
While taking the photo, I needed all of the image stabilization the lens could provide as with no tripods allowed up at the Sky Garden, shooting handheld is the only option and with a shutter speed of 1/6th second, a steady hand was needed to get a sharp photo. I could have increased the ISO or even opened the aperture a little wider but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, photographing through the glass up at the Sky Garden degrades the quality somewhat and to prevent noise from a high ISO or softness from the wider aperture making it worse, the pressure was on to get a blur-free photo with the settings that gave me the best image quality.
With the UK vaccination program in full swing, I become more hopeful by the day that I’ll be back in London with my camera soon. I can’t wait!
Cheers!
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
What's in my Camera Bag for Landscape Photography (2021 Edition)
It’s that time of year again where I post this updated "What’s in my camera bag” blog post and give you all a little breakdown about the kit I use for landscape photography and importantly why I use it.
It’s that time of year again, where I post this updated "What’s in my camera bag” blog post and give you all a little breakdown about the kit I use for landscape photography and importantly why I use it. I’m not a gear head and won’t invest heavily unless I feel my photography will benefit and would much rather use and get to know my camera gear well, instead of swapping it out regularly. That way, while out in the field, I can focus on taking photos rather than working out how to change the settings on a new camera and missing the moment altogether.
I think it’s worth noting that I do believe that it is the photographer that has the vision, chooses the subject and creates the image. There are many photographers that successfully shoot with a single body and lens, a compact camera or even just their camera phone and still produce quite stunning work so, although it’s nice to get a new toy every now and then, I certainly don’t get fixated on the photography gear and always fixate on the craft of making photos.
That being said, if you are shooting with intent and have a particular style or subject you want to capture, then the right equipment can remove much of the friction and allow the photographer to focus on the creative side of the process, instead of working overly hard to get the shot, possibly taking much of the fun out of the process.
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.” - Ansel Adams.
Cameras
I am a Fujifilm shooter and have been since 2016 which is when I first brought the X-T10 camera and after falling in love with the traditional feel, tactile controls and most importantly, the pictures it helped me take, I went all-in on mirrorless and sold my Nikon DSLR system.
Fujifilm XT2
Those that have followed me for some time know I am a Fujifilm shooter and this XT2 is still my primary camera. With the recent release of the XT4, there have been 2 updates to this model, but this camera still performs perfectly for me and I have no compelling reason to upgrade it just yet.
Fujifilm X-T30
Back in 2019, I upgraded my X-T10 to the X-T30 which to all intents and purposes is the same camera but with upgraded internals. I wrote a blog post about the switch which you can find here.
Camera Lenses
Zoom Lenses
Fujifilm XF 10-24mm lens F4 OIS
Fujifilm XF 18-55mm f2.8-4 R LM OIS
Fujifilm XF 55-200mm lens f/3.5-4.8 lens OIS
These three zoom lenses are my go-to for landscape photography. Between them, they cover a focal length of 10-200mm which is all I need when out, photographing the landscape.
Prime Lenses
Fujifilm XF 16mm F2.8 WR
Fujifilm XF 23mm F2 WR (New for 2021)
Fujifilm XF 35mm F2 WR
When travelling light or in need of a particular look, I will take these prime lenses with me. They are weather sealed so along with my XT2, I can head out in any conditions and still capture the shot I’m after.
Tripods
MeFoto Roadtrip
This MeFoto tripod has served me well over the years and has been the best compromise between weight and stability. It wasn’t expensive and up until only recently, since photographing woodland, I’ve been thinking about upgrading to a tripod with a little more reach.
3 Legged Thing Punks Corey (New for 2021)
Added to my gear in 2020, I purchased this tripod as I wanted a new lightweight but sturdy option when travelling around the city or further afield.
Filters
Kase Wolverine Magnetic Circular Filters 77mm Professional Kit (New for 2021)
I recently swapped to Kase filters as I love the simplicity of the magnetic system and as I heard so many good reviews, I took the plunge. So far so good. The filters are top quality and the magnetic system has made swapping the filters so much faster and less cumbersome.
My camera bags
Manfrotto Mover-30 Manhattan
I brought this bag in 2019 as I was after a bag that was large and comfortable enough to carry my cityscape gear but since last year, it has become my primary bag for all photo outings.
Manfrotto Pro Light
Relegated to my second landscape photography camera bag, the Pro Light is a little smaller and getting all my gear in is a little tighter so I’ve not used it so much over the last year.
Manfrotto Street
I use this bag when I need to travel light or I need to carry other bits as well as some camera equipment. This easily fits a camera and a couple of lenses leaving enough room in the top compartment for clothes and laptop etc.
So, how do I pack all of this landscape photography gear in my bag?
Although I have a healthy collection of camera gear, I certainly wouldn’t bring it all with me to each shoot. Below are 3 ways I might pack my bag, depending on where I’m heading to and the type of photographs I intend to take.
The collection above is my go-to landscape gear and everything I usually need when photographing landscape vistas or misty woodland scenes. I have my trusty XT2 camera, my tripod and zoom lenses that allow me to shoot between 10 and 200mm. The L-bracket is a must for any landscape photographer and helps me switch between portrait and landscape orientation without adjusting the tripod. Lastly, my Kase filters. I have a 3, 6 and 10 stop ND as well as a CPL stored in this handy carry case.
When I head out and want to travel a little lighter with my prime lenses, I might take this collection of camera gear. The lenses are small, light and super sharp and the 3 Legged Thing tripod is my go-to when heading into the city. If I know I won’t need a tripod, I might just slip the Manfrotto Pixi tabletop tripod into my bag and leave the 3 Legged Thing at home to shave off even more weight.
Travelling even lighter on days out with the family or just a casual photo walk, I tend to take my smaller X-T30, one or more prime lenses and the Peak Design Slide Lite camera strap. For a bit of stabilisation, I might pack the Manfrotto Pixi which can support quite a weight for its compact size.
So, there you have it, all of the gear I take with me in my camera bag to take landscape photos.
My plans for this year are fluid but as I mentioned previously, I may invest in a new tripod to give me a bit more reach while out in the woodland and depending on what Fujifilm release, I will keep my eye out for anything they announce, but however hard it might be, I’ll try to resist the temptation of new and shiny toys and only invest in new equipment if I know it will help my photography.
By all means, leave a comment if you want to ask me anything about my gear as I will always give an honest account of my own experience using it.
Until next time.
Trevor
Cascading Brook | Weekly Photo #90
Here’s a photo I took of a small cascading brook in my local forest.
Here in the South of England, the brief wintry spell of weather seems to be behind us (for now), and we are back in double figures. With the slightly warmer weather we had this week, it reminds me that spring is just around the corner, which completely passed us all by here in England last year due to the time coinciding with the first national lockdown. With any luck, the gradual easing will begin soon enough and we can all be out in time to enjoy the colours of spring and warmer, longer days.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 28mm | 0.8 Seconds | f/14 | ISO200
A few weeks ago, just before the “big freeze” I took a wander along a brook, which runs at the base if a shallow valley in my local forest. I started the morning on higher ground and I was surrounded by dense fog with no chance of any photos, so I walked down the hill, into the woodland in the hope that the fog would thin out enough to take some photos.
I found myself down at the brook which had a good flow due to the rainfall we’d had recently. On previous visits, during the warmer months, this tiny stream had almost completely dried up, so it was nice to see so much water creating these small waterfalls as it cascaded down the hill, over fallen trees and branches that lie across the water. I searched for a composition to capture the scene featuring the brook surrounded by the misty, atmospheric woodland and settled on this spot, looking back up-stream.
Purposely setting the camera up high on the tripod, in portrait orientation, pointing slightly downward and along the brook, I positioned the small cascade on the lower third, with the atmospheric tree-lined horizon on the top third. With the circular polarizer attached to reduce the glare and tone down the strong reflections in the water, I experimented a bit with the shutter speed to get the look I wanted and settled on 0.8 seconds as it gave enough detail in the water as it fell over the log in the foreground but without making it too smooth and featureless.
Lastly, I decided to focus stack this photo as I wanted it sharp from front to back. If I had taken just the one photo, focusing on just the cascade in the foreground, with it being so close to the camera, the background would have been soft and out of focus, even at f/14. What I ended up doing was taking 4 different exposures, each one focused on a different point in the photo, working from front to back. I later stacked and merged them in Photoshop, which gave me a sharp photo all the way back to where I would expect clarity to drop away as the mist in the air becomes more prominent.
I finished off the edit by cooling down the white-balance a little and some selective dodging and burning to help bring out a bit more depth in the photo. I’m really pleased with the final image. It represents well, the scene I witnessed while out on that foggy morning in the forest.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Beech in the Snow | Weekly Photo #89
A cluster of beech trees surrounded by a bright, frosty woodland.
Brrrr…!! It’s been a cold one this past week in the UK. Here in the south of England, we tend to get snowfall once or twice a year and when it does fall, it’s usually just a light dusting and gone within a few hours of daylight but every few years we get a heavier snowfall and that’s what happened this week and I had great fun photographing in foggy, frosty and snowy conditions. Restricted in where I can go due to the ongoing lockdown situation, I managed to get out with the camera a few times to photograph my local woodlands and forests and now have quite a pile of raw photos which I’m really looking forward to rummaging through and editing. Fingers crossed I have one or two keepers in there!
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 50mm | 1/17th Second | f/9 | ISO400
Keeping with the frosty theme, this is a photo I took a few weeks ago during what turns out to be quite a rare hoar frost. It wasn’t until I heard other photographers refer to it in this way that I wondered what it was, so I did a bit of googling. A hoar frost requires freezing conditions and moisture in the air, such as foggy conditions and ice builds up on the freezing surfaces making it appear like white hair which is why the word hoar, the old English term for “old age” is used.
While wandering the forest, I came across this cluster of beech trees along the path and was drawn to how prominent they looked against the brighter, more fragile looking frosty scene around them. I didn’t have many options in terms of where to place the trees as they were leaning into the frame so placing them on the right and using the dark, muddy floor on the left to balance the contrast somewhat gave me the composition you see here. Using my 18-55mm lens, I composed and took the shot.
This photo is featured in a blog post I released last week all about photographing winter landscapes and if you are looking to get the most of your own wintry landscape photos, take a look as you might find the tips I share useful.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Misty River | Weekly Photo #88
I photo I took of this epic view of the London Eye while visiting the capital with the family at Christmas.
I don’t know what it is about certain views or scenes I return to photograph time and time again. Take this particular view of the London Eye taken from the Golden Jubilee Bridge, I have photographed it countless times over the years as the sheer scale of the structure against the rather modest-sized buildings around it never fails to captivate me. I’ve taken photos I’m really pleased with but still, whenever I cross this bridge, I will often try and capture a new version of this epic London scene. “How many do I really need?” I guess I’m unconsciously creating a small body of work, maybe even a project to see how many different ways or in what different conditions I can capture this, one of my favourite views in London.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF23mm F2 | 23mm | 1/125th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
In mid-December last year, (in between lockdowns), my family and I made our way into a very quiet London for a bit of sight-seeing, drink some mulled wine and see the Christmas lights. Living only 30 minutes away on the train, we do this most years, as in normal times, there is a real buzz about the place at Christmas and we love to spend a bit of time soaking up London’s festive atmosphere.
Although this wasn’t a dedicated photography outing, I still like to have a “proper” camera with me to take the odd family picture as we go, so I took my Fujifilm X-T30 and 23mm F2 prime lens. Together this makes a super lightweight, but very capable set up to walk around with.
We spend some time over on the Southbank, trying out the street food with the kids digging into some churros with chocolate source while my wife and I enjoyed a cheeky mulled wine. Once finished, we decided to head over to Covent Garden to see the famous tree and maybe try the mulled wine on sale over there…., you know, to compare ;-) which meant crossing the Thames and passing by this London cityscape view which I like so much. As we crossed the bridge, the cold, misty rain started to make its way up the river and I noticed how the rain was defusing the buildings in the distance, softening the cityscape somewhat and giving a sense of depth and atmosphere throughout the scene. I was sure there was a shot to be had here.
As I lifted my camera to the eye, the rain started to hit the bridge. I had to be quick as my camera wouldn’t fare well in the rain and as my family ran ahead to get cover, I dialled in the settings and snapped away. As I was taking a hand-held shot, I had to be mindful of the shutter speed so not to introduce any camera shake so without any close foreground to worry about, I opened up the aperture to f/6.4 to let a bit more light in which in turn allowed me to keep the shutter speed quick and the ISO nice and low.
You could be forgiven in thinking this was a black and white conversion as, apart from the hints of orange on the boats and London Eye, there is very little colour elsewhere but that was how the scene looked and this one isn’t about the epic light and high contrast. For me, it’s more about the mood and atmosphere I tried to capture in this recognisable view of London.
Without many recent trips into the “Big Smoke”, I’ve enjoyed exploring my local area, hunting down and photographing the mist or frost in the forests nearby. I plan, over the next few weeks to share a few of the photos I’ve taken over the winter so far and although there will be fewer London photos (I still have some to share) in this Weekly Photoblog over the next couple of months, I do plan to get back up-town with the camera as soon as I am able to do so. How are you liking this mix of natural and urban landscapes? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Photographing a Frozen Landscape
This post features some of my recent winter landscape photos and includes 9 useful tips to help you get the most from your winter landscapes.
Winter can be one of the best times for landscape photography. Those blankets of snow across the landscape, cold, misty brooks, and frost-covered wildlife, if the weather plays its part, it can be a landscape photographer’s dream. Over the past few weeks, here in the UK, we’ve had some bouts of frosty weather and I’ve spent some time exploring the area close to home to photograph some of these wintry scenes.
Photographing in these conditions is not for the faint-hearted, especially when the temperatures fall well below zero and to get the best light, it can mean dragging yourself out of bed and heading out in the cold, dark hours but with the right “give it a go” attitude, the results can be well worth it.
In this post, I will want to share some of the photos I’ve taken over the last few weeks as well as some useful tips to help you get the most of your own winter landscape photography.
The picture above is a multi-photo stitched panoramic image I took while up on the hills in East Sussex looking across the landscape just as the freezing mist was moving in and if you look closely you can see the frost starting to form on the elevated trees on the hill. Getting up high to capture some of the low-lying freezing mist rolling through can result in some great wide vista winter landscapes.
A Frozen Woodland
If you’re really lucky, you might come across a hoar frost which is where the moisture in the air freezes as it hits the cold surfaces and builds up layers of hair like frost and I was fortunate enough to be out during one of these frosts where I took the two photos below. The white tips of the branches make them stand out and the misty conditions help to add some nice depth and frosty atmosphere in these winter landscape scenes.
When wandering around in sub-zero temperatures, it pays to have plenty of spare batteries with you as the cold weather dramatically shortens the battery life, especially when using mirrorless systems (which I do!). Even better, if you are out for an extended amount of time, try to keep your spares on your person, warmed by your body heat to help them last as long as possible.
After a heavy snowfall, I ventured into the local woods to seek out some wintry scenes. When you are presented with a thick snow cover, it can all look a bit “samey” with very little interest, so the key here is to seek out contrast and try to use it in your composition. In these photos, I used the dark path and trees to add the needed contrast and add some visual weight into the compositions.
When photographing winter landscapes, using auto white balance can mean the camera tries to compensate for the cool tones and warm the photo up too much. When shooting in RAW, this can be corrected in post but so I can see the image correctly on the back of the camera, I will usually go into my camera settings and manually switch to a cooler white balance so I can see how it will look while in the field.
To take the wide photo of the Scots Pines above, I spent a few minutes rooted to the same spot. It’s a panoramic image made of 6 or 7 photos stitched together so it took some time to set the tripod up, level it and punch in the manual settings to keep all of the images consistent as I swept the camera from left to right. While standing there in the freezing cold, I was thankful for having wrapped up warm before heading out. It seems obvious to say but if the cold starts to take hold, it can ruin your photography trip. Patience will wear thin and changing settings on your camera can be a real challenge when you can’t feel your fingers.
Once finished in the field, and after arriving home from being out in such cold weather, I will leave my camera in the bag to let it warm up gradually to avoid any build-up of condensation on the cold surfaces of the camera, potentially damaging the internal electronics.
A Frozen Intimacy
As I talked about in this post here, the photos below were a bit of a happy accident. After heading out to photograph some frozen landscapes, I realised too late that I didn’t have my tripod with me, so, instead of giving up, I decided to change things up and take some handheld intimate landscape shots of the frosty plant life around me.
The key to getting these photos was using a longer lens and opening the aperture as wide as possible. Opening the aperture gave me a nice amount of bokeh which helped to simplify the background and ensure the subject stood out. It also allowed more light into the camera meaning the shutter speeds remained fast enough to take these photos handheld.
When taking photos in the frost or snow, the camera’s light meter may want to balance the exposure and under-expose the brightest parts but snow is bright white so I will normally bump my exposure to compensate and using my histogram, “expose to the right”. This will ensure the image is nice and bright but be careful not to push it too far as overdoing it can lead to blowing out your highlights.
9 Tips for Photographing Winter Landscapes
Throughout this post, I’ve shared some tips for photographing winter landscapes and here’s a bit of a recap:
Make the effort and get up early to catch some of the best conditions.
Wrap up warm as standing there shivering or not being able to adjust the camera settings with frozen fingers will not make photographing wintry landscapes fun at all.
Take plenty of batteries with you. Even better, keep them warm so they last longer.
Look for contrast in the snow and use it to help your composition.
Get up high to photograph the low-lying mist.
User a cooler white balance to keep the snow a cool white.
Expose to the right to keep the photo nice and bright but don’t blow out those highlights.
Seek out the detail and capture the frozen intimate landscape
When you get home, leave the camera in the bag so it acclimatises slowly to avoid condensation forming on your equipment.
It’s worth noting that all of the photos here were taken while the UK was in a strict lockdown and although I’m incredibly thankful for having these woodland locations on my doorstep, I feel I have missed out somewhat in being able to travel further afield to capture some of the wide, impressive vistas we have on offer in the south of England, but this is a situation outside of all of our control and essentially “it is what it is”, and no photo is more important than the collective efforts needed to get us all free of these restrictions for good, so I did my part and stayed local and made the most of it and still came away with a healthy crop of winter landscape photos.
Maybe next year, I will create another one of these posts and be able to share a broader range of photos with you.
Until next time.
Trevor
Fortress in the Fog | Weekly Photo #87
This week, I take you to a foggy Bodiam Castle, nestled in the south-east of England where I was able to capture this atmospheric photo of the medieval fortress.
It’s funny how when things don’t go to plan, alternative opportunities spring up and that’s what happened to me this week when I went out on a frosty morning to take some photos in my local area. I realised quickly while setting up for a shot that I didn’t have my tripod with me and with the telephoto lens attached and the light levels low, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to take the shot I wanted handheld without a large injection of ISO or a wide aperture giving me just a slither of depth of field. Without the tripod and not willing to compromise on quality, the shot just wasn’t on.
Not one to throw in the towel easily and with frost all around me, I decided to use the long lens to my advantage and take a few closeup photos of the icy cold plant life. With plenty of backlight from the sun and some silky smooth bokeh provided by the wide aperture I needed to use to keep the shutter speed fast, I got creative and had some fun taking some wintery wildlife photos. If you want to see a selection of the images I captured, keep reading as I’ve included them towards the end of this post.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/15th Second | f/8 | ISO200
On to this week’s photo. This is Bodiam Castle, nestled in the Sussex countryside in the South East of England. This is the second time I’ve got up and out at sunrise to photograph this once powerful fortress, the first being during the summer months where I was able to take this photo, I called Misty Moat on a beautifully sunny morning (take me back!).
I mentioned in that previous post that I want to capture a dramatic long exposure photo of the castle with some streaky clouds and sharp reflections in the water but as I drove towards the location, I could tell that photo would once again have to wait for another day. There was thick cloud cover and I was driving in and out of pockets of fog so as I realised the original shot wasn’t on, I started to pray that when I arrived, one of those pockets of fog would be hanging around the castle. As I parked up, I could see that my prayers were answered…well, kind of. I was surrounded by fog, but there was a new problem. It was way too thick. I could barely see a few metres in front of me and with the fog as it was, there was no way I would get a photo. I was going to have to get the flask out, pour a coffee and wait it out.
I must have been standing there for 30 or 40 minutes before I could see the castle across the water and while I waited, everything around me was so still and peaceful with only the quacks from the ducks on the water breaking the silence. I was almost disappointed when it was time to take the photo.
When the fog had cleared enough, I took a few photos from the front of the castle as seen in the Misty Moat post linked to above which I’m sure I’ll share sometime soon enough but once finished there, I moved around to the back where the trees and grass create this beautifully framed view of the castle. With the framed castle surrounded by this atmospheric fog and the fantastic reflections in the water, it was like a scene from a fairy-tale.
To photograph the castle and include the frame, I used my wide-angle 10-24mm lens. It’s the only way I could get everything in but stay close enough to the foliage so that it didn’t overlap with the castle walls. I wanted to keep a nice gap around the castle so it stood out in the frame so I carefully placed the camera in position, keeping the composition as balanced as possible and went about taking the shot.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, things regularly don’t go to plan and if I don’t get the conditions to take the photo I originally planned, there is still a very good chance I can still make the most of what’s on offer an come away with a portfolio worthy photo. Although I regularly try to pre-visualise the photo I want to capture when heading to a location like this, I make sure to keep an open mind and remain flexible so I can take advantage of whatever conditions I come across.
As promised, here are the bonus pictures I took this week while out on a shoot in my local woodland. As I spoke about at the beginning of the post, I had no initial intention of taking these photos but I had no choice but to change my plans and ended up with what I consider a nice crop of close-up winter plant life images. I hope you like them too.
Take care and stay safe.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Isle of Dogs | Weekly Photo #86
The epic skyline of Canary Wharf over on the Isle of Dogs in London taken from the Sky Garden.
I hope you are all enjoying the mix of urban and natural landscapes I’ve been sharing lately. When I first started this weekly photo series, the vast majority of the photos I took and subsequently shared were of London but at the start of last year, those visits into the city slowed to a crawl and whilst I miss my trips uptown and can’t wait for them to start again, I’ve really enjoyed getting out into the natural landscape which, in these current times is far more accessible to me.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 1/300th Second | f/3.5 | ISO200
This week’s photo of the skyline over at Canary Wharf was taken from the Sky Garden, near London bridge. I took the shot towards the back end of 2020 during a short lockdown interlude, during which, I visited the Sky Garden twice as I wanted to give myself the best chance of walking away with a few good photos. Thankfully I did and you can see another picture taken from the same vantage point looking across West London here: Weekly Photo #79 - Cloudburst Over London.
It’s been years since I’ve looked across to the Isle of Dogs and it not be completely overwhelmed by a ridiculous number of cranes across the skyline. Surely, they haven’t finished building it, have they? Of course, I’m joking. London is and will be under constant change and although there are a few cranes dotted around this photo, it’s still quite a rare sight to see this view with so little construction and if you ask me, it looks fantastic.
Taken through the window, I needed to open up the aperture to hide the dirty glass and by using a cheap lens hood from eBay, I was able to block out any reflections from creeping into the image. A welcome side effect of having a wider aperture is that it lets more light into the camera, so my shutter speed was 1/300th second which, at 55mm, was fast enough to handhold without the fear of getting any camera blur.
Back in post, I decided on a slightly cooler tone and went about dodging and burning parts of the image to help balance the way the light hit the scene. Also, shooting through the dirty glass window did soften the photo a little so I spent some time working with local adjustments to add some of that clarity back to certain parts of the image using various tools such as texture, clarity and contrast sliders, at the same time, being subtle enough to ensure I didn’t overdo it and add any noise or degrade the image in any way. My last step was to push the photo over to Photoshop and use the High Pass filter to sharpen the final image.
This photo has a layered look from front to back which I really like and although it’s an epic cityscape vista with huge skyscrapers that stretch up beyond the horizon, the balance and mood of the photo portrays a strange but very welcome sense of calm when I look at this photo. I’m looking forward to printing this one.
I feel the change of approach needed to photograph subjects such as the natural woodland has already had a positive effect on the way I photograph London. It’s early days as I’ve only photographed the city a handful of times in the last 6 months so I haven’t had a chance to explore this train of thought yet, but based on the photos I’ve taken from my most recent visits, I feel I’m less dependent on the grand vista with epic light and I’m now finding more photos in less favourable conditions which I may have previously struggled with. I’ll probably talk about this again when I’ve had a chance to explore this further and trips to the big smoke start up again for me.
Stay safe out there.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Wintry Woodland | Weekly Photo #85
A wintery scene in my local woodland I was lucky to photograph during a brief hoar frost.
One of the very small but positive side effects of this wretched pandemic is how it’s encouraging us to explore the parks and woodlands right on our doorstep and ever since I started my woodland photography side-hustle, I’ve been spending much of that time close to home, forcing me to explore my local area, resulting in me uncovering a few hidden gems to wander with my camera within just a couple of miles from my house.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 1/6th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Last weekend, I visited one of these local woodlands on what was one of the most beautiful, wintry mornings I’ve had the pleasure to photograph. With the temperature at around -3 and an atmospheric fog passing through, what resulted was this beautifully picturesque hoar frost throughout the woodland and together with Holly (my dog), we spent a great couple of hours exploring the forest.
We roamed the woodland while taking a few photos as I went and after about an hour or so, we started to wander down this path and with the misty, frosty feel and pathway leading into the distance, I knew there was a shot to be had. So out came the camera which I used to line up the best composition and once found, onto the tripod it went. I deliberately placed the foreground trees on the left hand third with the path heading into the image and around the back of the trees on the right-hand third and with the tree standing alone in the midground, it subtly added some visual weight and balance to the overall composition. In an ideal world, the trees on the left wouldn’t be overlapping so much as it makes it look a little messy over there but if I tried to move and sperate the trees, the composition didn’t work at all so it had to stay as is. I don’t think it looks too bad really.
I went straight for my 55-200mm lens which is my go-to while shooting woodland. It’s a great focal length range, it produces sharp photos and it’s nice and light so doesn’t weigh me down too much. With the settings dialled in (see under the photo), I went ahead and took the shot.
Although it’s quite a simple photo, I really like the texture on the birch trees in the foreground and back in Lightroom, I made sure I preserved this along with emphasising the misty atmospheric look of the overall photo.
It was such an amazing morning and I was lucky enough to capture a few more wintry woodland photos during the morning and will share these soon enough.
Take care.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Photographing London in the Fog
An on-location photo blog featuring pictures taken during a foggy morning in London.
A few weeks ago, I managed to get a morning shoot in London just before the latest restrictions came into place across the UK telling us to stay indoors and just as the weather apps predicted, I was greeted with some fantastic foggy conditions when arrived, so, with my Fujifilm XT2 in tow, off I went to take some photos.
Just a note on the format I chose for this post. Although it works just fine on a smaller mobile screen, if you can, do try to view the post on a larger screen as the pairs of photos in square format works best to tell a cohesive story.
After leaving London Bridge train station, I headed over to More London and took a few pics of the view towards City Hall and Tower Bridge before crossing London Bridge to capture some cool, atmospheric shots of HMS Belfast and Tower bridge along a misty River Thames.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 11mm | 7 Seconds | f/11 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 13mm | 1.9 Second | f/11 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 24mm | 1/5th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 13mm | 1 Second | f/11 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/25th Second | f/5 | ISO500
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 17mm | 1/7th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Some of you may remember a few months ago I posted a lookup shot taken in the City of London shortly after the fog had lifted and although I was happy with the final image, I was still disappointed not to get the photo I originally wanted. So, not to risk missing it again, I quickly walked into the city to have another attempt at taking a lookup photo with the taller buildings disappearing into the mist and thankfully I made it in time. I took a few different compositions and below are two of my favourites from the morning.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/35th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/6th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Last but not least on this foggy photo walk in London, I ventured west to take a few pics around St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge. With these places photographed so much, I played around with the lines and frames on offer to present a few different views of these popular London subjects. I finished the morning across the river in front of the Tate Modern Museum to capture the popular view of the Millennium Bridge leading towards St Paul’s Cathedral with the famous dome disappearing into the fog.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/25th Second | f/11 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 24mm | 1/120th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 13mm | 1/80th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/150th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 13mm | 1/75th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 21mm | 1/25th Second | f/10 | ISO200
Bonus Pics! London Eye Night Photography
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if I should share these photos on this blog post as they are visually very different to those above but I decided to go with it as I really like the set but with only four photos, there’s not enough to justify their own dedicated blog post.
After my morning shoot in the fog, I headed into the office for my day job but instead of heading home at the end of the day, I decided to walk along the River Thames to take a few pictures near Westminster. So much great work has gone into upgrading the lights along the river and with the relatively calm water providing some cracking reflections, I decided to take this set of photos featuring different views of the London Eye and the South Bank.
In case you were wondering, that bright light to the left of the London Eye in the first image below is the moon passing behind. I tried a bracketed exposure to blend in later during post but it wasn’t to be.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 14 Seconds | f/14 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 28mm | 1/80th Second | f/3.2 | ISO800
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 11mm | 18 Seconds | f/16 | ISO200
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 11mm | 13 Seconds | f/16 | ISO200
I love it when a few hours of photography results in a good crop of photos to share and this platform is my own online gallery enabling me to showcase the photos in a format that I think works best. Hopefully, you agree and as ever, if you have any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below.
Until next time.
Trevor
The Girl and the Dolphin | Weekly Photo #84
A classic view of Tower Bridge from the Girl and the Dolphin fountain and 6 ideas to keep you busy when getting out to take photos isn’t possible due to a local lockdown.
Hi there! So, the UK is back in lockdown (number 3) so, over the coming weeks, photography outings will need to take a bit of a back seat while we fight back this wave but apart from some decorating jobs that have suddenly appeared on my to-do list, I will use any time I have to work on other photography-related bits and pieces such as printing some more of my photos and writing the odd blog or two. If like me, you’re also having to stay indoors at the moment and looking for some photographic inspiration to pass the time, check out the list I made at the end of this post.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF16mm F2.8 | 16mm | 1/20th Second | f/10 | ISO800
Here’s a photo I took during a sunrise shoot around Tower Bridge in late 2019. After taking some shots over the river around More London and City Hall, I crossed Tower Bridge to see what photos were on offer north of the river. I spent some time walking around St Katherine Docks and ended up at this popular viewpoint next to the Girl and the Dolphin fountain, which, when positioned correctly, adds some useful visual weight to the left-hand side of this composition and helps to frame the bridge somewhat. As the sun was rising above the horizon, it moved behind a thin layer of cloud which helped to diffuse the light, casting this warm reddish glow on the towers. I normally shy away from taking photos when the light is direct and harsh so the defused light worked well for me here.
Armed with just the 16mm prime lens I had to move around a bit and zoom with my feet to get the best composition available and although I would have liked just a bit more space to allow the top of the tower to breathe a little more, the focal length still works and emphasises the scale of Tower Bridge nicely in my opinion.
I didn’t have to do too much in Lightroom but I did pull back the saturation a little, lowered the exposure in the sky and used some local adjustments to dodge and burn parts of the image.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, I will be making a list of things I want to work on during this current lockdown in the UK so for those that might be in the same boat, I thought I would share a few ideas as to how photographers can keep themselves busy while being stuck indoors.
6 Ideas to keep photographers busy in lockdown
#1 Print some of your photos
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you may already know that I think printing your best work is really important but instead of listing the many reasons why I think so here, pop over and give this blog post a read as I go into much more detail over there: Why every photographer should print their photos.
Whether you have a printer at home or not, this is a perfect time to prepare and print some of your own photos. If you have never printed your work, why not jump onto YouTube to pick up some tips to get the best-looking prints and find a local print lab, alternatively, if you’re already familiar with printing your photos, why not go one step further by designing a photo book or select some photos that look good together and create a cohesive wall display so you can unleash some of your best work from that hard drive and see it all in its tangible beauty.
#2 Start a small photography project
Literally, anything can be photographed and I think it’s really important to keep those skills sharp and muscle memories exercised so pick a subject such as your favourite colour while out on your daily walk or if you have another interest, see how you can incorporate your photography somehow such as still life photos of what you make or creative photos of the equipment you use. Think outside the box and have some fun with it but don’t forget point 1 above and have a think about how you could display or share the photos either by print or a social media account.
#3 Upskill and get inspired
Whether it’s a course offered by your favourite photographer, a YouTube playlist or a website such as Skillshare, it’s never a bad time to educate yourself and learn new skills that you can put into action with a lockdown project or when out and about again once the restrictions ease.
#4 Dig into your photo library to find or re-edit your older work
I’ve spoken about this topic a lot in the past because I think your photo library can be a treasure trove of unedited or abandoned photos that at the time didn’t suit your style or you lacked the skills or tools to edit the photo to its full potential, so, why not check back through some of those more memorable shoots and see what hidden gems you can find.
#5 Review your photo backup workflow
Ok, not too exciting but necessary all the same. What would you do if that one and only harddrive with all of your photos stored on it was to fail? Could you recover them? Can you afford the recovery service? If you’ve been neglecting to backup your photos recently, now is a great time to design a simple, foolproof way to protect your most cherished files. Check my blog post here to see my own backup workflow and some inexpensive ways to implement one for yourself: My Photo Backup Workflow.
#6 Get offline, relax and read a good photography book
Is that photography book that you brought and saving for a sunny day with harsh light still on the shelf gathering dust (I have three to read!")? Why not set aside an evening here or there to close the laptop, pour your choice of drink and find a quiet corner and take an hour or two out to read that book. Being in lockdown doesn’t mean life is any less hectic so it’s important to take time out and relax when the opportunity arises.
Hopefully, the list of ideas above inspires some of you looking for photographic things to do while getting out to take photos isn’t possible. Feel free to contribute with your own ideas in the comments below.
Stay safe and well.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
The Performer | Weekly Photo #83
A foggy woodland photo taken in East Sussex in late 2020.
Welcome to my first Weekly Photo post of 2021! Last week I wrote a bit of a 2020 review which, along with some other bits and pieces, featured 9 of my favourite landscape photos I took over the last 12 months which included this foggy woodland photo I took in November. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can find the post here: 2020 | A Photographic Review
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 0.5 Seconds | f/11 | ISO200
Misty or foggy conditions seem to be the holy grail for woodland photographers as it can help simplify the scene, add atmosphere and give the feeling of depth in a photo. So, when I first started to take woodland photography more seriously, it took a few months before I had my first taste of sustained fog that allowed me to explore the woodland and take a bit more time to seek out compositions as all of my previous foggy experiences were a bit rushed as the mist was quickly burned away by the sun.
What I learned very quickly was that when I was surrounded by fog, I could see compositions a little more clearly and I took more photos but translating a nice-looking scene into a good photo wasn’t any easier. My eyes quickly adjusted to the conditions and where I thought I could see a well-defined composition with just the right amount clarity in the subject, the photo regularly came out hazy and washed out, lacking any definition at all. Instead of the fog making my job easier, I found it to be just another element to manage in the scene and if I could find the right balance like this photo here, the photo came out ok but the vast majority of photos I took that morning had to be binned. Another woodland photography lesson learned, I guess.
So, after spending an hour or so wandering around the forest, I came across this scene which I was already familiar with and photographed last year when the scene was full of the golden colours of autumn. I liked the arrangement of the trees, the carpet of orange ferns in the foreground and the scene had just the right amount of fog to ensure the foreground had definition but enough haze to bring some nice atmosphere and depth.
I named the photo “The Performer” as when reviewing the photo, I was struck by how the arrangement of the trees appeared to show the tree near the centre of the image standing in a “ta-da” pose after performing some kind of show to the trees that look like the audience on the left and right of the frame. It feels a bit odd to anthropomorphise the trees in my photos but now I have, I see it every time I look at the photo so the name stuck.
Once again, I wish you all a happy and healthy new year and talk to you next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
2020 | A Photographic Year in Review
My photographic review of 2020 including a look back at some of my favourite photos.
Wow, what a year it’s been! It’s been a tough one for so many people but you won’t find me complaining here as I feel I have got through it all so far relatively unscathed. Yes, I had to stay indoors, cancel some of my travel plans and home-school my children but I count myself lucky compared to many that have suffered devastating loss or our heroes on the front-line fighting back against this invisible disease on behalf of us all. As I said, I can’t complain.
Overall, it’s not been a bad year for me. My family and I still managed to get a holiday to sunny Greece during the summer, I’ve been able to continue working from home while using the time I would have spent commuting to continue focusing on my fitness and just the other day, ran my 1000th mile since the start of 2020.
So, what about photography? I started 2020 as I finished 2019 with some trips into London in January and February before it all changed. My camera went into hibernation during March, April and most of May and only really came out again from June but my photoshoots in London which I love so much have been few and far between ever since. Last year, I managed over 40 trips into London with my camera whereas this year I only just made it to 20 but thankfully I still came away with some photos I really like, three of which I’ve shared in my favourite 9 landscape shots of 2020 below.
Photographing the woodland
I would say the single biggest change I’ve experienced this year was my venture into woodland photography. It’s a photographic genre I’ve flirted with before but never really given it a good go. My photography style has always been about a significant subject in the landscape, be it a skyscraper in London or the piers along England’s south coast, but with the need to keep away from the crowds and remain socially distant, woodland photography was an obvious direction to take, but I have to say, trying to create interesting compositions in an otherwise random and chaotic environment was very new to me and a challenge to say the least.
That being said, I have stuck with it and after a few months of exploring my local forest and regularly coming away without a photo, I do feel I’m getting into a groove and finding my style so I’m very much looking forward to seeing what I can capture during the upcoming winter months.
I have absolutely loved reconnecting with nature and have really enjoyed the peace and tranquillity which has, without doubt helped me personally during the more anxious times this year. So, when life gets back to normal, I’ll certainly be continuing this woodland photography adventure.
Print and backup your photos!
During 2020, I released a couple of longer form articles and shared some useful information about two photography related subjects that I feel are incredibly important. I’ve been printing my photos for a few years now and whether you use a print lab or your print at home, I think there is so much to gain by creating printed versions of your photography.
Next up and although not quite as sexy as printing photos this one is equally as important. To some people, protecting their photos is a bit of a minefield, full of pitfalls, uncertainty and jargon, so I decided to share my own photo backup workflow in order to help others who might be struggling with their own.
9 of my favourite landscape photographs I took in 2020
Given the year we’ve all had, I was still pretty pleased with the crop of photos I took in 2020. I have around 20-25 keepers taken in London and across the South East and as I have done over the last few years, I have shared my 9 of my favourite landscape photos taken over the last 12 months.
For those I’ve already shared on my Weekly Photo page, I have included a link to take you straight to the post where you can read a little more about the picture.
Landscape photography in London
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF35mm F2 | 35mm | 1/20th Second | f/10 | ISO160
Titled “London’s Burning”, this photo was taken early in 2020 during one of the most epic sunrises I have ever seen and a worthy inclusion in my top 9 photos. Find out more about this photo here: London's Burning | Weekly Photo #64.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/9th Second | f/11 | ISO160
Taken around More London, I had to get down low to get the strong lines that lead the eye over towards the recognisable shape of Tower Bridge and with the sunrise providing all of that amazing colour, I knew I had a keeper when I took this photo.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/6th Second | f/6.4 | ISO200
As soon as the restrictions were lifted after the summer, I booked myself in for a couple of trips to the Sky Garden to capture London from the rooftops. I took this wide-angle shot of The Shard across the river and just love the way that iconic shape stands alone in the centre of the frame, towering over the surrounding buildings under those moody clouds which shortly after brought some heavy rain which you can see over on the right-hand side of the frame.
South of England landscape photos
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 11mm | 1/20th Second | f/10 | ISO200
After deciding to photograph more around the south of England and less in London during the pandemic, taking a trip to the beautiful Bodium Castle was high on my list of places to photograph and I could not have asked for a better first visit back in May. The light was amazing and there was a light mist over the moat adding a special amount of atmosphere into the photo. Read all about it here: Misty Moat | Weekly Photo #63.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 18mm | 1/50th Second | f/10 | ISO200
I was after a photo of wild heather for some time and after scouting a few locations, I came across this beautiful scene in East Sussex during a misty late summer morning. Read all about this photo here: Late Summer | Weekly Photo #72.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 18mm | 1/1250th Second | f/7.1 | ISO200
One I haven’t shared yet but boy what a morning I had over at Halnaker in West Sussex back in the Autumn. I love the way the scene was lit by the sun behind me, those dark stormy clouds adding some epic drama and to top it off, a fantastic double rainbow! I’ll talk more about this morning in an upcoming Weekly Photo post so stay tuned for that.
Woodland Photography
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 1/3rd Second | f/9 | ISO200
While on a sunrise shoot during a foggy morning in my local forest, I took this woodland photo of these Scots Pines amongst the ferns. Read all about this particular shoot here: Misty Dawn | Weekly Photo #78
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 86mm | 2 Seconds | f/10 | ISO200
Titled “Zigzag”, I took this photo in a local Forest and was drawn to the strong lines created by this interesting tree to the right. I wrote more about this photo here: Zigzag | Weekly Photo #80
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 0.5 Seconds | f/11 | ISO200
I had some great fun photographing my local woodland during a foggy morning in November and really liked the arrangement of the trees on the left and right of the frame. These trees almost look as if they are bystanders watching the performer in its “ta-da” pose in the middle. I love the muted tones, carpet of dull orange ferns and that mist is the icing on the cake. I’ll talk more about this photo in an upcoming Weekly Photo post in 2021.
At this point, I normally talk about what I have planned for next year but to be honest, I just don’t know. Yes, I’ll continue to photograph London and the South East of England, I’ll continue to write my Weekly Photo posts and I’ll certainly be back photographing the woodland but other than that, with all that’s going on, we will just have to see what the year brings.
Thanks to all of you that have visited my website, supported me on social media and written to me with words of support and encouragement, it all means a lot and it really does motivate me to keep writing these articles.
I wish you all a 2021 that’s full of renewed hope, freedom and above all else, good health.
Until next year,
Trevor
Into the Clouds | Weekly Photo #82
A long exposure photo of The Shard lost in the clouds taken on a misty morning in London.
First up, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and during these testing times, managed to take some time out and relax over the last few days. I’m writing this the day after Boxing Day having had way too much food and drink and taking what seemed like hours to build some Harry Potter Lego with my youngest. Although quieter than usual, we made the best of it and ended up having a nice couple of days.
Fujifilm X70 | 18mm | 28 Seconds | f/8 | ISO200
Although not quite as festive as last week’s photo of the Cartier store in New Bond Street, I thought I would round up the year with another photo of London taken just before Christmas a few years ago. If you look closely you can see the white Christmas tree over the river, underneath The Shard.
While in London I, I was travelling very light and had with me the great (and sorely missed) Fujifilm X70 camera. The X70 is a compact, pocketable camera with a fixed 18mm lens that took great quality photos which I’ve since sold to help fund my Fujifilm X-T30 but I long for Fujifilm to release an updated version as I would be first in line.
It was a misty, atmospheric morning with some low hanging cloud and after taking a few photos across the river, around More London I headed over Tower Bridge to take this cityscape vista of The Shard reaching up into the clouds. Along with the X70 camera, I had the Manfrotto PIXI tabletop tripod and a round screw-in Hoya 10-Stop filter so I used these to capture a 28-second long exposure which helped to smooth away the ripples in the water, soften the clouds and simplify the overall scene. Having re-processed the image for this blog post, I’m now really happy with the results.
Next week, I plan to release my yearly review of some of my favourite photos I took/released during a rather unconventional 2020 so keep an eye out for that on my website in the coming days.
Lastly, I just wanted to spend a moment to thank you all for your support throughout 2020. I know it’s been a tough one for so many people and I hope my posts have brought some of you just a tiny distraction from all the goings on and I truly appreciate the positive messages of encouragement I received from some of you throughout the year. It’s those very messages that push me to keep writing when my own motivation needs a little kick up the proverbial.
So, here’s to a 2021 that’s full of renewed hope, freedom and above all else, good health.
Happy New Year.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
A London Christmas | Weekly Photo #81
A Christmas themed photo of London taken of the beautifully decorated Cartier store on New Bond Street.
As I did last year with this photo of the famous Covent Garden Christmas tree, I wanted to share another festive themed photo so I re-edited this one I took last year along New Bond Street in Mayfair of the classy Cartier building wrapped in a bow.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/20th Second | f/4 | ISO800
I had planned to share a photo of London at Christmas featuring some lights or decorations taken this year and I did manage to make a trip into town to shoot around the West End before the restrictions were severly tightened around the city but I’ve not had time to sort through the photos I took so I checked back on the photos I took last year and found this one only partly processed and effectively abandoned.
I’m not sure if this is common amongst all photographers but even through this photo was taken over a year ago, I can somehow remember the morning vividly and seem to be able to recall where and when I took almost every photo in my collection. I remember walking from Green Park Station just as the rain started and wishing I had remembered a hooded jacked or umbrella but as I was on my way to work, I couldn’t just stand there taking photos getting soaking wet so I had to find cover and wait out the heaviest of the rain.
Once the rain had cleared, I walked along New Bond Street and stopped directly opposite the decorated Cartier store so, I grabbed the camera to take the shot. Even with my wide-angle 10-24mm attached to the camera, I knew this would be a tough shot to take as with my back against the wall opposite, I could only just fit everything in and having to point the camera upwards meant I needed space around the building to straighten the verticals in post processing so, I wouldn’t really know if the shot would work until I got it back home and started editing the photo.
If I remember correctly, the reason the photo was never quite finished was I just couldn’t get the lines to look even close to straight using the geometry tools in Lightroom but this time round, I had the guided upright tool at my disposal so I could now tell Lightroom what lines needed to be vertical and which were horizontal and like magic, the picture was straightened but with very little space to spare on this 3:2 crop. The remaining post-processing was cooling down the colour balance, desaturating the strong blues and reds and brightening up the iconic London Phone Box in the foreground.
I’ve spoken before about revisiting older photos as new tools and editing skills develop, you never know what potential you have lurking in your archive so I definitely recommend checking back on partly edited photos (you can filter these in Lightroom) to see what photos you thought had potential but couldn’t quite get right. As time passes, your skills will have developed and the software you use might now have a feature that solved the issue like it did for me.
It’s been a strange old year and one that most people will want to, but probably won’t ever forget so, with all that’s going on in the world, I do hope you can put that to the side just for a short while and enjoy the festivities as best you can.
Merry Christmas.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.
Zigzag | Weekly Photo #80
An atmospheric woodland photo of a zigzag tree in the Ashdown Forest in Sussex.
I took this photo a couple of months ago while I was exploring a new part of my local forest just as autumn was kicking into gear. I came across this funky looking tree while down in a bit of a valley and was drawn to how the trunk zigzags up from the ground and continue to do so all the way along the branches making it really stand out in this area of woodland.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 86mm | 2 Seconds | f/10 | ISO200
After spotting the tree and deciding to take the picture, I had to find the best spot to shoot it from. Although it may appear straight forward to just wander around to find the best angle, it gets a bit trickier in the woodland because as you move around, all of the elements change. The best angle of the tree may mean a more distracting background or the best distance away may mean you end up with other trees obscuring the view or encroaching into the frame. So, although I would have preferred it if the two trees on the left of the frame were not overlapping, from where I was standing, this was simply the best composition available to me at the time.
Speaking of those trees, I purposely kept them in and to the left to ensure the composition was balanced across the scene. To exclude them would mean placing the zigzag tree in the centre of the frame and I didn’t like that idea and I thought the moss-covered trunk nearest the camera added some more character and enhanced the feeling I was after.
Once I had the composition, I set up my Fujifilm XT2 camera and 55-200mm lens on the tripod and importantly, placed my circular polariser on to the end of my lens. The circular polariser is perfect for a scene like this as it takes off any glare and reflection from the trees while at the same time giving the green moss a real punch and with the green and blue ambient tones, it gave the overall image a cool, dark mystical feel which I like a lot.
I took a few different versions of this composition from landscape to portrait and even zoomed right in to capture the strong lines created by zigzagging branches which turned out really well. I might share it on this weekly photo series in the future. We will have to see.
With the festive season now in full swing and the lights up around a relatively quiet London, I plan to head into town this week to see if I can capture another Christmassy photo and if all goes to plan, I will share it next week. In the meantime, why not pop by last year’s post of the large Christmas Tree in Covent Garden.
Take care of yourselves!
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.