Early Doors
Frosty pre-dawn start this morning for a dawn chorus walk with the local wildlife group.
Nikon D7200 Tamron 17-50mm f11 17mm 1/160 ISO 100.
I’m feeling lucky
I’m still trying to love the Nik Collection. One thing I have learned so far – it’s a huge time sink. My control freakery is making it difficult for me to give up the control I have learned over the years with Photoshop. To me, the filters seem to have a harsh, Instagram feel – or is that just Photoshop snobbery? On the other hand, I’m struggling to reconcile a package which has a filter called “I’m feeling lucky” (which is exactly what you think it is) with Ansel Adam’s idea that you should know the image you want before you pick up the camera.
However, I’ve never been able to achieve anything like an acceptable HDR result with Photoshop, so the Nik HDR plugin was attractive. I took a 5 stop series of this uninspiring composition in order to try it out. What do you think? I’m still not convinced.
An Easter Egg
You may have missed the news that Google has just made the Nik Collection free. (If you bought it in the last year you can get a refund. If you bought it before that, well that’s Capitalism for you.) So I’ve been playing around with it, and as you can see from this horribly over processed fake cyanotype, I need lots more practice. Although I would say in my defence that this comes from a fairly unpromising starting shot.
Almost Like The Fens
Gently rolling hills. That’s how we roll in Leicestershire. But if you stand on this spot at dawn, screw up your eyes and peer into the mist across the still sodden fields, it’s almost like the fens. Almost.
My tiny cup runneth over
Repeat after me, “The closer you look, the more you see.”
In the darkest and most remote parts of Leicestershire the native peoples hold to the ancient belief that if you can drink a whole pint of Carling out of one of these tiny cups without spilling a single drop you will live to see Gary Lineker present Match of the Day in his underpants.
We are a spiritual people in Leicestershire.
Cladonia fimbriata.
More on Gary Lineker’s underpants here.
Receding Into The Fog
For a while now I’ve been admiring the painterly quality achieved by some of my favourite landscape photographers. I’m starting to feel like I’m making progress. It’s all very ironic. Most of the time photography is about striving for sharpness. I suppose being able to turn softness on and off is some indication of mastery. I’m not claiming mastery, but I have learned that landscape photography is about limiting the field of view to a few simple objects. And if that’s not a metaphor for life, what is the point of photography?
More effective LARGE.
AJC Photography 