Autumn Colour - Durham

First Light

The rising sun peeps through the trees into the Wear valley, near Penshaw.

I'm not a great fan of these so called high dynamic range (HDR) shots, they often look very unnatural, but there is a fashion for them in some quarters and the photos do sell. As with most techniques of post processing, if it is not possible to tell that there has been trickery, that is when the results are most pleasing.

In fact photographers have been using HDR from the very earliest days of the art, when the very limited emulsions of the day could not record a realistic range of tones, and it was necessary to use more than one exposure to adequately record a scene. I believe that it was first employed to capture seascapes with detail in the dark water and light sky.

In this case I used two very different exposures, one to tame the sky and sun and another to reveal detail in the foreground, They were taken hand held and blended in Photoshop. I like to think that this is not too obvious in the result!

Autumn Colour in the Lake District

A rainbow seen near Grasmere village



St Mary's church Rydal Mount



A view across Grasmere



Grasmere from Loughrigg Terrace

Canon 5D Zuiko 28mm f3.5 lens

Light Through Trees - Cox Green

I cycle to work through Cox Green wood. On this morning the light was streaming low through the trees, casting long shadows. It made me think that in a few weeks time it will be too dark for photography both in the mornings and when I return in the evenings. A tad depressing.

Canon 20D, manual focus lens.