Neil Alexander | Photographer » Links http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com Manchester based landscape and travel photographer Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:31:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Stanage Edge in the Peak District http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/12/02/stanage-edge-in-the-peak-district/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/12/02/stanage-edge-in-the-peak-district/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:00:03 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=17580 wpid17578 Stanage Edge Peak District Neil Alexander 01 590x392 Stanage Edge in the Peak District

Stanage Edge, Peak District (Click to view larger)

Last weekend, I had the privilege to spend the entire weekend up in the Peak District. If you’d been following my tweets, you’d have noticed that Saturday, weather-wise, was a disaster. The day started off grey and miserable and ended up the same way, and to be pretty honest felt even greyer and more miserable in between. That said, it was still a very productive day. I must have covered over 100 miles driving around scoping out potential locations, working out where the sun would rise and set at each and what angle to shoot from etc etc. It was extremely beneficial and I found a mighty fine spot for lunch at the Fox House Inn near Hathersage. Though when I got back home on Saturday evening having shot a mere handful of frames and after looking at the forecast for the next day, I felt a little deflated. I met up with a good friend that evening and we shared a few shandies and I went to bed quite late having decided that I was going to have a well earned lie in and, if the forecast stayed true, I was going to catch up on some editing.

I surfaced about half an hour before sun up and true to form it looked bleak, so I climbed back into bed with the Sunday papers. Having indulged myself for over an hour, I decided that I needed to head back up to the Peaks, and just see what played out. I’m glad I did. Sometimes, I just get a feeling that they greyness is here to stay, and that despite all my best efforts, I end up making nothing. This morning however, I just had a hunch. As I drove back up over the Snake Pass, I entered an eery misty other world, and then as I dropped down the other side, I caught faint glimpses of golden winter sunlight through the clouds. Sure enough as I arrived at my first location, Stanage Edge, the cloud had thinned sufficiently to produce little pockets of sunlight dotted all over the landscape. I smiled.

wpid17581 Climbers at the foot of Stanage Edge Peak District Neil Alexander 01 590x392 Stanage Edge in the Peak District

Climbers at the foot of Stanage Edge, Peak District

Stanage Edge is a 6 kilometre long gritstone edge sited on Hallam Moors due North of Hathersage. At its peak it’s probably only about 25 metres high, but it is stunning to look at and clearly very popular with climbers. Currently there are over 800 recorded rock climbs, with more being invented every year, however it’s becoming a victim of it’s own popularity and in places much of the vegetation has been worn away by the endless walking boots clambering over it.  In fact the same can be said for large swathes of the Peak District – congested roads, full car parks etc etc.

Unfortunately I feel that the more the current government’s drive to build new homes on existing green belt land, the more those looking for a little jaunt to the countryside will be herded into beauty spots like the Peak District as there will be no place else to go.
Finally, here are November’s selected from the web links…. Some great photographers – well worth a look.

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/12/02/stanage-edge-in-the-peak-district/feed/ 0 Selected from the web for August http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/08/30/selected-from-the-web-for-august/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/08/30/selected-from-the-web-for-august/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:00:16 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=17152 I’m all out of time for a post today, but as it’s the end of the month tomorrow, this’ll coincide nicely with the month’s selected from the web…..

And finally some wonderful work from Alexander Neumann – don’t know too much about him, other than his fashion work is wonderful!

That’s all for today folks…..

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/08/30/selected-from-the-web-for-august/feed/ 0 Model shoot with Anna and June’s selected links http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/07/01/model-shoot-with-anna-and-junes-selected-links/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/07/01/model-shoot-with-anna-and-junes-selected-links/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:17:13 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=15785 The other week I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of working with the lovely Anna again. We did 3 separate location shoots, though the last one was a complete disaster for one reason and another, but the less said about that the better….. Instead I’m going to give you a quick insight into how I made the photograph below.

wpid15653 Neil Alexander Lge 1 590x887 Model shoot with Anna and Junes selected links

Anna by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

We met up around 11am and headed down to a spot on the edge of Ashley in Cheshire by the banks of the River Bollin. It’s an area that I’m quite familiar with having shot many landscape images there before – this one being my favourite. Knowing the area helps hugely when I’m trying to pre-visualise the final image, and this in turn aids me with composition and lighting at the time of making the image as I already have quite a clear vision in my mind’s eye of how I want the finished product to appear.

I had Anna turn sideways on to me with her back to the tree and then lay her arms along the branch behind her to provide a leading line into the frame. I then lit her with a Nikon SB900 flash inside a 76cm Lastolite Ezybox HotShoe softbox camera left and a grided SB900 camera right. It was one of those days when the sun was constantly in and out of the clouds, so the purpose of the softbox was to provide a soft controllable light on Anna, but it meant that I only shot when the sun was behind the clouds. It gave me more control over the amount and direction of light that fell on Anna, though to be honest most of the time the sun was behind the clouds it diffused the light so much and so smoothly that this light didn’t really effect the final image very much. It was only when the sun went behind really thick cloud that I noticed the light visibly decrease and then the Lastolite came into play. The other light behind Anna did generally make much more of an appearance. To this light I applied a small home-made grid which focused the beam coming from the unit and allowed me to direct it squarely at the back of Anna’s head. This gave me sufficient light to bring out her hair and to separate her head from the tree more. All shot TTL and the above was made using the 70-200 at 1/250 sec, F2.8 ISO 400. The final images was then imported into Lightroom and processed in Nik’s SilverEfex Pro2.

Here’s the set up shot:

wpid15607 Neil Alexander Lge 1 590x392 Model shoot with Anna and Junes selected links

Model shoot set up (Click for larger)

Finally as a little Brucey Bonus as it’s the end of the month, here’s a few links that have caught my eye over the last month. Worth a few mins if you’ve got the time……:

And FINALLY…….
If you’ve visited the site lately, you’ll undoubtedly have noticed a wee change…… I’ve moved over from my previous theme to a Graph Paper Press theme and will shortly be incorporating this into a new PhotoShelter site (It’s all part of my grand plan…). However in the meantime, things are liable to change, shuffle about, fall off, go back on and generally get tweaked here, there any everywhere, so apologies in advance. Obviously as many of the changes as possible will be done offline, but sometimes the only way to change bits and pieces is whilst stuff is running live.

TTFN

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/07/01/model-shoot-with-anna-and-junes-selected-links/feed/ 0 Selected from the web for May http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/06/03/selected-from-the-web-for-may/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/06/03/selected-from-the-web-for-may/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:00:08 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=15620 I’m currently over in Malta working on some fresh travel imagery, and without anything significant prepared for the blog this is the best I could rustle up for today’s post I’m afraid…
A few interesting photography related items for May:

Back in Blighty early next week at which point normal service will be resumed….

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/06/03/selected-from-the-web-for-may/feed/ 0 More from Malta and Selected from the web for April http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/29/more-from-malta-and-selected-from-the-web-for-april/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/29/more-from-malta-and-selected-from-the-web-for-april/#comments Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:22:10 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=14629
neil alexander 1 XL 950x646 More from Malta and Selected from the web for April

Maltese window (click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

 

Happy Friday y’all. I had penned an extended blog post on the subject of cable releases and tripods in advance yesterday only for BlogPress to eat it, and I’m afraid that I just couldn’t face trying to extract it from my verbally limited brain again. So today I’ve furnished you with a couple more images from my most recent trip to Malta, and as it’s the end of the month I’ve provided you with a double whammy and included April’s “selected from the web”…

neil alexander 2 XL 950x600 More from Malta and Selected from the web for April

Maltese doors (click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

 

Here’s a few interesting photography related items for April:

Photographers and some photographs worth taking a look at:

Tips and techniques that I’d recommend you take a butchers at:

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/29/more-from-malta-and-selected-from-the-web-for-april/feed/ 2 Selected from the web – March http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/08/selected-from-the-web-march/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/08/selected-from-the-web-march/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:00:08 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=14257 As I’m away (without a laptop for the first time in years), and no scheduled post prepared, here’s a few interesting photography related items for March for this week’s post:

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/04/08/selected-from-the-web-march/feed/ 0 Selected from the web for February http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/03/07/selected-from-the-web-for-february/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/03/07/selected-from-the-web-for-february/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:38:55 +0000 Neil http://manctog.com/?p=13065 Here’s a few interesting photography related items posted around the web in February (better late than never eh??): Read on:

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/03/07/selected-from-the-web-for-february/feed/ 0 Selected from the web – December 21st http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/12/21/selected-from-the-web-december-21st/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/12/21/selected-from-the-web-december-21st/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:53:21 +0000 Neil http://manctog.com/?p=9113 Here’s a few interesting photography related items for December 21st:

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/12/21/selected-from-the-web-december-21st/feed/ 0 Selected from the web – November 19th http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/11/19/selected-from-the-web-november-19th/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/11/19/selected-from-the-web-november-19th/#comments Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:09:27 +0000 Neil http://manctog.com/?p=7471 It’s a while since I’ve done one of these, so I’ve a few worth sharing and as it’s Friday…..

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/11/19/selected-from-the-web-november-19th/feed/ 0 Selected from the web – August 16th http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/08/16/selected-from-the-web-august-16th/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/08/16/selected-from-the-web-august-16th/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:08:04 +0000 Neil http://manctog.com/?p=1089 It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but there’s some interesting stuff in here I thought I’d share.

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