Learn the rules and then learn why and how to break them.

1. Rule of Thirds
   Imagine splitting your frame into 3 equal horizontal strips, and then 3 equal vertical stripes. This will give you the basic layout for the  ”rule of thirds” which basically states that in order to make your frame more appealing to the eye, you should place the focal point, or primary element of your photograph on any of the 4 inner connecting joins.
   

   Salford Quays at sunset

   For one reason or another (too complicated to go into here), this generally makes your image more aesthetically pleasing. However, this is not always true but you need to learn why it works, and when to break the rule. For the image below of the bridge in Salford Quays at sunset, I have purposefully placed the bridge in the lower third of the frame which also gives me more room to show the magical colours in the sky.

2. Balance- this is simply the arrangement of shapes, colours, or areas of light and dark that complement one another and make sure that the photograph does not have an uneven feel to it. For this image below of “Dawn in the Peak District”, I have used the rising sun in the top left to balance the munching sheep in the bottom right. Without the sun in the frame, the image appears lopsided, and bottom heavy.
   

   Dawn in the Peak District

3. Simplicity- Make sure that your frame is free from clutter, and always make sure to check the edges for intruding elements. If you could lose that telephone pole by taking two steps forward, then do it. Telephone poles, random tree branches, power lines are all examples of elements that if included in an image, often provide distraction inevitably detracting from the final quality of the image. These are also all things that can often easily be removed by moving your feet a few paces forwards or backwards. In this image of Sarah below I have gone in close to remove some distracting grafitti on the wall just to the camera left. This image also incorporates elements of point 4 below using the lines of the brickwork to lead the viewer’s eye up to the subject.
   

   Sarah

   

   Kayleigh by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)An example of a very clean and simple frame, also incorporating an element of balance using the moon to provide equilibrium with the model

4. Using lines – Lines can often be used to draw the viewer’s eye into and around the image. These don’t just have to be clear lines like roads or paths, but they can be more abstract such as the line of a subject’s gaze, or the pattern created in a cloudy sky. The more of a path you can create for the eye to follow in an image, the longer you will keep the viewer engaged, and the stronger the image will be. In the image below I have used the windy line of the road to lead the viewer’s eye from bottom right round and up to the tree.
   

   View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning (Click to view larger)

Windsor Castle by Neil Alexander (Click to view larger)Here I have used the path of the staircase bottom left to lead the viewer's eye into the frame

Tree in the Derwent Valley, High Peaks (Click to view larger)

Further to last week’s post on Stanage Edge in the Peak District,  here’s a couple more images from that weekend that I’ve just processed. Multi-frame HDRs processed in Photomatix Pro and then tweaked in Photoshop and Lightroom. Got quite a few keepers that weekend, so there’ll be more to come….

Tree in the Derwent Valley, High Peaks (Click to view larger)

Shortest post ever I think today. Overload of processing to catch up on, early sunset to make something of and car to be collected from VW.

Have a great weekend y’all

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.

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.

• Address Is Approximate on Vimeo
  Google Street View stop motion animation short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins.
  Story: A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.
• 13 Item Hit List That Will Make A Successful Artist | Chase Jarvis Blog
• Michael Levin | Photographer
  I absolutely love the work of this photographer. The beauty and simplicity of his work is fantastic.
• [News] Nat Geo’s 2011 Photo Contest: Entry Ends Nov 30th | Fstoppers
  Some jaw-droppingly amazing photographs. Well worth a few minutes of your time
• Use a Shoe to Remove Stuck Lens Filters
  This one is well worth remembering
• Mobile Holmes
• Michael Freeman Photography
• ERNST HAAS ESTATE

Blacko Tower, Nelson, Lancashire (Click for larger)

This is a photograph that I made earlier this week up on the Lancashire / Yorkshire border. I had intended to try and get quite a bit closer to the tower, and did plenty of research before heading out only to find a large “Private Property – Keep out sign” on the gate at the foot of the hill. On this occasion, I opted to respect the wishes of the landowner and found an alternate vantage point. Having made the image, it was close to dark for the yomp back down the hill to the car park.

All was going fine until I crossed the penultimate styal at which point I had to cross through the middle of a field of very inquisitive sheep, who, by the time I reached the middle of the field had all congregated behind me. About 70 of them. And they were getting closer, and bolder. They had horns, and weren’t exactly small. At this point I was getting a little apprehensive. Would they charge at me for invading their field? Do sheep even do that? Were there any documented cases of people being trampled to death by a herd of crazed mutton? The edge of the field and safety seemed miles away. And then I crossed a small gully about 3/4 of the way across the field, and they just stopped. I began to breathe a little more easily though continually looking over my shoulder. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I reached safety……

The photograph is a 9 frame HDR (there was an extensive contrast range in the scene – from the setting sun to this side of the tower) with selected frames processed in Nik’s HDR Efex Pro, and then some selective editing in Lightroom.

That’s all for this week.

N

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/11/18/blacko-tower-nelson-lancashire/feed/ 0 http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/11/11/bridgewater-canal-lymm/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/11/11/bridgewater-canal-lymm/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:45:52 +0000 Neil http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/?p=17499

Autumn sunset over Bridgewater Canal, Lymm, Cheshire (Click for larger)

Last weekend I was over in Lymm by the Bridgewater Canal just before sunset where I made the photograph above. It wasn’t quite as still as this initially looks. It was actually a little breezy, but I wanted a silky smooth feel to the water for this, so I popped on my Singh Ray variable neutral density filter and dialed it about half way in. This combined with a polariser to get the most out of the reflections in the water gave me a 2 second exposure which was perfect for smoothing out the ripples in the water. I then shot 3 bracketed frames and tone-mapped these in Photomatix. Now I’m not sure whether it’s just my filters ( I really ought to look after them better considering how much the bloody things cost), but whenever I make long exposures with my ND’s and then tone-map them, it looks like somebody spat pretzels all over the lens. Click on the crop bottom left and you’ll see what I mean. It probably cost me an hour or more to fix this in post, and to be honest it still needs a little more work. Annoyed.

Anyway, that resolved I then added a little grad over the sky in Lightroom and began work on the moon. That same day, a little later with the moon about to set (it was particularly large in the sky) I grabbed a few frames of the moon only (see bottom right). This is actually quite a close crop as the longest glass I have is 200mm, but it served my purposes. This was made at sunset. The sky was still quite blue, but I exposed for the light of the moon (1/500 sec at F2.8) which perfectly exposed the moon and left me with a completely black sky – much easier to lasso in Photoshop.

Next I opened up the top image and the shot of the moon as layers in Photoshop and proceeded to mask the moon in, cloning out the moon that was in the image originally which was much higher in the sky, and thus smaller at that time. Following still? I added a little horizontal grad and toned the colour of the moon layer a little to replicate the orange/red light from the setting sun.

Not bad for an afternoon’s work, I hope you’ll agree. Any questions on the process, feel free to hit me up in the comments.

Now off to clean those damn filters…….

It also became apparent very quickly that whilst the majority of the apps that I used on my iPhone & iPad were available on Android; Evernote, Nozbe, Docs To Go, Dropbox, Spotify, Audible and others, there were some notable exceptions especially on the photography front. One of my most used on the iPhone was Pro HDR Camera, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this on the Android marketplace. I was even happier once I’d installed it. On this handset, this app flies. I don’t have the iPhone anymore so I can’t do side by side testing, but I’d hazard a guess that on the S2, Pro HDR will process an image in around 1/4 of the time that the iPhone 4 did, if not faster. In fact, every app flies on this handset to be honest.
So to my list, as the title of this post demands: (I could really have gone to town on this and done the 20 or so apps that I can’t live without, but I figured simple is best. So it’s 4. But they’re the ones I use all the time.
1) Has to be Pro HDR Camera.

2) Next up is an app that’s new to me so I’m still experimenting. Camera Zoom FX extends the functionality of the default camera app even further by offering manual focus, continuous focus (for video), burst mode, time-lapse, voice activation and more. The FX part of the name refers to a bunch of extras that can be added to the app which I’ve not quite got my head round yet, but by default framing, vignetting and a whole raft of Instagram-esque filters are included too.

3) Third on the list is so simple, and it’s not technically a photography app, but I use it a LOT. It’s called simply “Torch – Flashlight“, and it does exactly what it says, but the beauty is that the little flash on the back of this SII is so powerful that this app turns the phone into a very useful emergency torch – much brighter than the iPhone 4. Only last weekend I was up in the Peak District, about a mile from the road down a boggy gorge to shoot sunset. By the time I was ready to pack up it was pitch black. Where was my torch? In the boot of the darn car. SII to the rescue. It helped me pack all my gear and find my way back up the gorge I was in and back to the car. Saved my ass I can tell you.

4) Finally, and a little disappointingly this is an IOS only app at this stage. Velaclock beautiful in it’s simplicity. It simply tells you sunrise and set times for a given location (and you can save several), moon times, and azimuths along with associated astronomical, nautical and civil times. Doesn’t appear to be available for the ‘droid at all, and after hours of scouring I’m afraid to say that I haven’t found anything that comes even close.

Puddles in a field, New Longton (Click to view larger)

A little detour on a trip back from Lancashire earlier in the week found me at the entrance to the field above just as the sun was setting around 6pm. The countryside around these parts is rather flat and uninspiring and it was hard to find a composition that I liked. So with minutes to go before the sun actually set, I plumped for this. It gave me the hedges on either side as a frame within a frame, and the gate post and puddles as a bit of a foreground accent. Now before you exclaim,”But dude, the grass is red…”, yes it is, and I like it like that, thanks.

This image was a 5 frame HDR sequence, and I’ve included the +2,0 and -2 EV frames straight from camera so you can see a little better why HDR works. The 2 stops over image captures all the detail in the sky, but the hedges are black with no definition whatsoever. The 2 stops under has a completely white and lifeless blown out sky, but the hedges and the foreground are all “properly” exposed. I couldn’t have got away with an ND grad filter here either, because the hedges on either side of the frame extend so far up to the top.

So HDR was the only way to go. So the image just below is that sequence tonemapped in Photomatix Pro, which is the main piece of software I use to process HDR sequences. But this is just really the beginning of the processing. Once I have a single tonemapped image, then the fun really begins. Of late my processing toy of choice has been Nik’s latest incarnation of Color Efex Pro – version 4. It’s a delight to work with, and many of the presets (and there are many) produce some great results. However I try and put a little more effort in than simply applying an off the shelf preset and thinking “job done”. The final image above is actually 4 separate filters with different degrees of levels applied and selective use of Nik’s amazing U-point technology control point features.

I like the red grass. It’s almost poppy-esque, but it’s also got a slightly alien feel to it too.

Puddles in a field, New Longton (Click to view larger)

Anyway, as always I’d love to hear your comments and feedback so feel free to hit me up in the box below.

TTFN

1/125 F8 - 2 stops under

1/30 F8 0EV

1/8 F8 2 Stops Over

View up The Struggle towards the Kirkstone Pass Inn, Lake District

I had intended this post to be a follow on from last Tuesday’s “4 Photography gadgets I couldn’t be without“, and was going to focus on “4 iPhone photography apps that I couldn’t do without”. But I’ve just gone over to the darkside and got myself an Android, and I’m still finding my feet with it.

So just a quicky today. Another photograph from my trip up to the Lakes recently – a view up “The Struggle” towards the Kirkstone Pass Inn near Ambleside.

Finally, before I forget, I’ve just had an interview I did with Peter West Carey go up on his site thecareyadventures.com. He’s also posting a Photo a day from me too this week. Check out the interview here.

View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning (Click to view larger)

Last week I made it up to the Lake District again, and although this time I was up there for less than 24 hours, it proved quite a productive trip. The light on the evening I arrived was good. Not great, but workable. I’d clambered half way up a hillside overlooking Derwent Water getting a few decent images on the way, but my primary goal was to capture a dramatic sky over the peaks on the other side of the lake as the sun went down, but alas it was not to be. I waited and waited until it was nearly dark, having left my coat and torch in the car and then had to blindly stumble down the hill in a very cold wind and near darkness without breaking my neck or suffering from exposure.
The next morning didn’t look like I was going to fare much better. Out of my B’n'B before dawn I could barely see my hand in front of my face it was that misty. Worse once I was up “The Struggle” on the way to the Kirkstone Pass. Here and there the mist lifted a little, so I shot a little, capturing some nice eery misty scenes but eventually I gave up and headed back for a good ol’ Cumbrian breakfast. As I was finishing my coffee whilst reading the paper on my iPad I realised that I was having to shield it from the sunlight – the mist was lifting and the sun was making an effort to break through the clouds. That was my cue. I grabbed my gear, thanked my hosts and headed back up into the hills again. By this time, there was quite a bit of drama beginning to unfold in the clouds after the previous day’s blue sky. Here and there the sun was poking through and then disappearing again. Almost perfect! I really couldn’t have asked for much more. Well maybe it didn’t have to be quite so windy and cold. I would find a scene, set up and wait for the sun to come into the frame and light a part of the landscape, shoot and move on. This I did quite successfully three or four times running, with the sunlight arriving in my photograph almost as if I had summoned it. And almost as soon as I’d captured the scene as I wanted it, the sun would disappear behind the clouds again. This is exactly how it happened for the scene above.

And to the processing. After listening to Martin Bailey’s podcast on Nik’s Colour Efex pro 4, I felt obliged to download it and give it a whirl and see if it really was much of an improvement on version 3 for myself. I was pleasantly surprised and used it to great success on this image. I made this photograph with a 3 frame HDR, though I was being lazy and hand holding, so the +1 stop exposure is soft and I had to discard it. So it’s really just two frames merged in Photomatix Pro. But it was sufficient, fortunately. I then opened up the tonemapped image in Colour (sorry, color) Efex Pro and added a couple of different styles, and little selective toning. I love the result. Below is one of the original exposures straight out of the camera, dust spots and all (I really must get my sensors cleaned), so that you can see how much difference a bit of an effort in post processing can make. More posts to come from this shoot methinks, and I’ll put some of them up on my Lake District gallery in due course.

Unprocessed - View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning

John Rylands Library, Manchester (Click for larger)

As part of the reworking through my library I’ve found quite a few images of Manchester that I had initially discarded which looking at now, with a slightly older and more informed taste, I think are most definitely usable photographs. Both of these images were taken inside John Ryland’s Library in Manchester on one of their occasional photographic tours. The top photograph is an HDR image made from 5 separate exposures. Unfortunately I made this in the days before I owned a tilt/shift or perspective control (in Nikon speak) lens so in order to return the pillars to their correct vertical position (a wide-angle lens will distort vertical elements), a little skewing in Photoshop was used. Below is the longest exposure of the sequence at 4 seconds – it’s really quite dark in there. You can see that there is some motion blur in the centre which also had to be removed and you can also see how a wide angle lens causes all the vertical pillars to appear to be leaning outwards giving a slightly unnatural feel – this is not how your eyes see it. Well that’s not true. They do, but your brain automatically corrects the information whilst processing the scene.

The bottom image was taken in the vaults of the library, where it’s really dark. There are row upon row of very old books of all shapes and sizes, but I really liked these with the ribbon tied around them to hold them together. This one was processed in Nik’s HDR Efex Pro to add an even more distressed feel.

Old books in the archive at John Rylands Library (Click for larger)

As a photographic tour, this one is well worth a punt. From memory you’ve only got an hour or two, but I highly recommend that you slow right down and take your time. Don’t be like the others in my group who all just dashed off, grabbed a few frames here and there and were done.

Take a tripod and take your time.