Astbury Church, near Congleton in South Cheshire. A slightly more unusual viewpoint of this church, which is usually photographed in the height of spring when the green in front of the church is bedecked with daffodils. This had to be taken early in the morning to get the sun on this face of the church. It was taken with a 35mm camera using a Sigma 18mm Wide angle lens and the resultant converging verticals were corrected in Photoshop. With 35mm I just take my film into somwhere like Jessop's and get them to process the film and digitise the images and put them onto a cd-rom. I do not scan prints in myself or digitise the negatives...too time consuming and expensive for the amount of 35mm photography that I do. It's just that the ultra-wide 18mm lens is indispensible for this kind of shot, where my digital camera just does not have a wide enough angle of view.
Dove Dale and the river Dove
Dovedale, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. This area is very popular with walkers though it is quieter during the week when this shot was taken. This is a conventional shot using an 18mm wide angle lens on a 35mm camera. In Photoshop, the image was rotated slightly to level the horizon and water. Here the river Dove leads the eye into the picture from the bottom left hand corner, but as the river turns, it stops the eye from moving out of the picture to the right and leads it back to the main element, the tree, placed about one third in from the left. Although a pleasant enough shot, it is a bit too bland and conventional for me.
Astbury Church 2
Astbury Church, near Congleton, South Cheshire. One of the most photographed churches in the area. I had to get up early for this more unusual viewpoint of the church, as the sun soon moves around putting this face of the church in shade. Shot on 35mm using and 18mm wide angle lens, the resulting converging verticals were corrected in Photoshop.
The Cloud
The Cloud, South Cheshire. This rocky outcrop on the southern edge of the pennines near Congleton is very popular with walkers. I found it quite difficult to photograph. On an overcast day, the hill just looks grey and somber, and it can also be difficult to get the right viewpoint. I realised that just getting the rocky face of the hill was not enough, the whole shape of the hill was important. In the end I took this shot about an hour before sunset, which was when the sun was in the right place to get the traditional view of the hill, and I used the tree and railway viaduct as other objects of interest. Unfortunately, the wide angle lens diminishes the size of the hill in comparison to the foreground objects, but of all the focal length lenses I had, I still felt that this was the best shot that I could get on this day. The wide angle lens was a Sigma 18mm and I used my 35mm camera.