As usual it's a big thank you to all of you who took time out to read my last post. Padley Gorge. Peak District 04/02/2024It is greatly appreciated.
I've had a bit of feedback over the last month which is always welcome, so if you need to contact me about what you would like to see in future post feel free to get in touch, through any of my social media accounts, by dropping me a message, or post in the comments below it's always good to hear from you.
One such request was to see a bit more information on the technical side, camera setting, post processing etc. So after a bit of thought, I will try to Introduce some of this in my future posts. I will add a section at the end of each one, about the way I went about processing the pictures shown, and we shall see how it goes. Hopefully It will be of interest to some of you, so in this post I will just run through my basic workflow in general, (not on these pictures.)This would be done in future Blogs.
During the second week of this month the forecast was for snow to fall around these parts and particularly on higher ground, so there was a good chance that the Peak District would get a good covering, so I was hoping that the weather reports were not going to be wrong, and that I would get the chance of capturing some snowy scenes so my fingers were crossed.
Wednesday evening came, and still the forecast looked good, the snow was due to arrive the following morning at around 7am, so I got my gear ready, and thought about were I was going to go.
The first location that sprang to mind was a trip up to the Millstones below Stanage Edge ,I had been wanting to shoot these stones in these conditions for a while now but never got to do It with snow on them, so this was my opportunity, plus they are easily accessible from the road and if the weather really did turn for the worse, I wouldn't be to far away from the car, and could soon be on my way before the roads got to bad.
So I was up bright and early the following morning, and after a quick drink, I made my way over to the Peak District, looking forward to what was hopefully going to be a good outing with the chance of at least getting a couple of shots.
Passing Fiddlers Elbow 01/01/2024, I was greeted by a thick blanket of fog, and it carried on until I reached my destination, (The large layby on The Dale, the road that leads you down towards Hook Carr car park).
It was still dark when I arrived ,and the visibility was near enough zero, light rain was now falling, and a breeze had picked up. I was hoping that this rain would soon start to turn into the white stuff and give me what I had ventured out for.
The window of opportunity wasn't a long one, I had to be somewhere at 11 o'clock so I was hoping that the weather forecasters had got it right, and fortunately around 15 minutes after arriving the rain started to turn to sleet, so I jumped out of the car, put my boots on and grabbed my gear and headed off over the road, and headed up the path that takes you over the moorland towards where I wanted to be.
I soon arrived at the Millstones and took shelter under one of the boulders that sticks out protruding from the gritstone edge, a welcome respite from the elements.
The sleet was now turning to snow, though not heavy, but just enough to give the stones a light coating, I thought about setting up my gear, I pretty much new the compositions I had in mind, after all I had shot this location on numerous occasions in the past, plus it gave me the added bonus of not having to do much walking around, putting my footprints everywhere, so It didn't take me long to have the tripod in place ready to take my my first shot once the light got a bit brighter.
The first picture was to be with the camera pointing westerly, with the fields in the distance, the snow covered roofs of he farmhouse just visible, below the second third of the frame, and the main focus being the Millstones along with the tufts of grasses in the foreground, (I was also going for a square crop in this instance so I dialled It in on my camera settings.) Well that was my theory, but the fog was still too thick to see anything other than what was in front of me, so it was a case of standing under my shelter, after covering my camera and lens with a towel I had In my bag and waiting for my chance.
It wasn't long before the opportunity arose where I could finally attempt to get some shots, the conditions where changing, the visibility was a little better, plus the wind had eased, and the light snow had briefly stopped falling, so after a quick couple of lens wipes I started to take some pictures. I checked the back of the camera and all was looking good, I was happy with the results.
Camera : Fujifilm Xh2
Lens : 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR.
Tripod :Benro Mach 3. Benro Geared Head.
ISO 125. 2 secs. F8. @27mm.
Auto White Balance.
Moments later the conditions soon started to deteriorate, the fog returned, and the snow started falling again, so my thinking was to shoot the opposite way, towards the east, the bonus was not being able to see the cars that where parked on the roadside in the distance with the visibility being so bad ,so I walked around to the other side of the stones and composed my shot.
Again the main focus point being the Millstones, slightly off centre of the frame to the right, the dark gritstone rocks on the left added a bit more contrast to the scene, plus I was liking the way the paths created a nice leading line as they forked off into the murky distance.
The weather wasn't making things easy my fingers were getting numb and I was getting wetter by the minute and the constant wiping of the lens was slowly beginning to get annoying, then we had another brief lull, so I was able to fire off a couple of shots before it returned, this time a lot more heavily
Camera : Fujifilm Xh2.
Lens : 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR.
Tripod : Benro Mach 3. Benro Geared Head.
ISO 125. F8 @ 20mm.
Auto White Balance.
I had got the pictures I wanted so it was time to return to the car before the conditions got any worse, so I made my way back along the path, passing one walker who was braving the conditions for a walk on the edge, and he informed me that the roads had started to bad, so I was glad to have called it a day when I did.
The drive home was a bit tricky, luckily for me I have snow tyres fitted every year for these sort of days and they did the job perfectly on this occasion. I got home without any mishaps and soon put my feet up in front of the fire, with a nice hot drink, happy with the morning's outcome.
POST PROCESSING.
In this post I would like to run through my usual processing routine.
The first thing to say is that 90% of my pictures are processed in Lightroom ,with only the odd trip over into Photoshop, usually to use the lasso tool to remove unwanted Items that I couldn't avoid while out in the field, and to use Gaussian Blur sometimes, when I'm editing woodland shots, but Lightroom is my go to software.
I don't like to spend too much time sitting in front of the computer processing Images, usually 15 mins is more than enough time for each image.
Let's start at the beginning.
The first thing I do after importing my pictures is to adjust the white balance to what I'm looking for, then the exposure is adjusted if needed, highlights are next, along with shadows. My whites and blacks are always done by pressing down the ALT key on my keyboard ( Option on a Mac ), while clicking the slider on each and moving it until the the colour just starts to bleach through, then I usually pull it back a touch so none are clipping on the Histogram.
Sharpening is then added, though I tend not to push the slider too far, usually 25 to 30% is plenty for me. Clarity, Texture and Dehaze is hardly ever touched, the only time I move these sliders is when I'm processing my woodland images when I pull the sliders down to the left a little. The Vibrancy slider is used on occasions but only to around 12% and the Saturation is left alone, I chose to do this in the colour mixer panel.
After these adjustments I then move into the Tone Curve Panel, and keep it pretty simple by just selecting Medium Contrast, and then moving back up to the contrast slider in the Basic Panel, adding a touch more if I feel the need to do so. This seems to work for me so I keep it this way.
All this is being done globally, before I move into local adjustment, introducing Radial, and Linear Graduation Filters, if I need to add them,(I very rarely use the brush tool), to work on the shadows, and exposure, also to add a little more contrast to any particular area .
One thing I find helpful to do after doing all this and before I finish the post processing procedure is to flip the picture upside down. The main reason for doing this Is that you can soon see any Imbalance of the picture, and then I can pull over a linear grad over the bottom and adjust the exposure to balance the scene, (try It If you've not done It and see the difference).
Finally the last thing I do Is add a little vignette If I feel the need, and I do this by reducing my picture size on the screen to 6.3% and dragging a Radial Filter over, and pulling down the exposure to what I want.
That's about it, then I walk away from the computer for an hour, get a coffee and return later (it's surprising how it the picture looks after you have been away for a while) and tweak anything that I think needs adjusting.
So that's a basic rundown of my post processing procedure, hopefully it was a bit of interest to you.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time.
Wayne..
Add comment
Comments