Spring Signs

A little late/early depending on your point of view, but as we're starting to head into the closing months of the year I thought it'd be nice to have a snapshot of what we will be able to enjoy again soon!

On a rather chilly January morning I spotted the first signs of new growth for the coming spring whilst walking in the Ivel Springs nature reserve in Baldock!  I liked the way the almost monochrome ground cover was in sharp contrast to the green of the new shoots and so I decided to make this even more extreme, by turning it into a black and white background whilst maintaining the bright green shoot.

The original shot before post-processing.

This image was shot on my old EOS450D and hand held to allow me to get low enough to the ground.  To cut out all hand shake I took the image at 1/125th of a second and to make a limited depth of field I used an aperture of f/6.3.  Due to the pretty poor light, it being an overcast day under the cover of trees I had to use an ISO of 800, about as high as my old camera would go before the image became unacceptably grainy.  I used my long telephoto at its maximum zoom of 500mm so I could shoot from the walked area around the path and not damage any other new growth in the area.  I had no flash unit with me so had to rely on the natural light, I'm not sure flash would have been useful anyway for the image I had in mind!

Post-processing was, surprisingly, very simple.  I copied the active layer to give me my working layer that would become the black and white bit; then I used the magic extractor tool to very carefully select everything but the bright green bit (in more technical speak I made the bright green the background (negative) and the rest the foreground (positive)).  Once the selection was made I simply clicked the convert to black and white and bingo, once flattened the image was finished.

The final image.

If anything is wrong with this it could possibly be argued that the image doesn't follow the rule of thirds, it's very close in height but centrally placed across the screen.  I see no problem with the way it is composed, in fact I would say the centrepiece is not exactly central, put that right with a crop and I'd be happy!

Roll on spring 2013!

Sunny Shillington

The church at Shillington sits on an area of raised land meaning that it is clearly visible from every direction.  I was hoping to get a shot of it with a moody sky behind and the sun lighting the church up.  On the day I chose to make the trip to take the shot the clouds weren't quite as moody as I hoped for, but the sun was nicely lighting up the fields in front of the church.

The farmer who owns the field by the side of the road was kind enough to give me permission to enter his field to take this shot, my thanks go out to him for giving me that opportunity!

I took the image on my 7D using a tripod for stability.  I shot with an aperture of F/22 at ISO500 and 1/250th of a second.  I wanted to make the whole image sharp, but had forgotten I'd set a fairly high ISO on a previous day's shoot so I could have gotten away with a slower shutter and larger aperture if I'd remembered! I shot using my 18-55mm lens at 30mm.

In post processing I carried out a but of a fake HDR routine to brighten the church slightly, I couldn't get the full HDR effect as the camera moved very slightly between shots, even using a tripod and so the images didn't exactly overlay.  I also sharpened the church and tractor slightly and cropped a little to get closer to the ideal thirds.

If anything I feel the tractor looks like it's motoring into nothing but there were distracting objects to the left which meant I had to position it where I have.  I also think the church is a bit grainy, possibly as a result of the higher than optimal ISO.