Another stark shot at Lyme Park in Cheshire. The important elements in the composition here are the tree, the tower, the figure and the rock. Positioning the horizon low in the frame gives a feeling of space and expanse. It was important to get the base of the tree standing out against the sky, as opposed to being obscured by the background landscape.
A stark black and white shot taken at Lyme Park, in Cheshire, England. For some reason last year I got into black and white photography - something I have not done much of in over forty years of taking pics. I know that colour pics can easily be changed to black and white on photoshop, but sometimes I think that effect is better using the black and white mode on the digital camera. The difference between takling and colour and black and white as far as the photographer is concerned consists of learning to 'see' in black and white - which means picking out shapes and textures rather than areas of hue and colour.
Classic Peak District National Park scenery. I don't often do this kind of shot, but the light was just right here. The sun was quite low in the sky and so the texture and curves of the hills are picked out nicely. I increased the colour saturation slightly on Photoshop using the slider in Image/Adjust/HueSaturation menu. This kind of image is of a very conventional composition to me, with the farm and path leading the eye up the hill to the trees and summit. To be seen at its best, this kind of image needs a big enlargement and high quality, so the more megapixels the better. This would need to be a 16X20 inch print at the minimum to bring out the detail and to intimate the size of such a vista. The advantage of the more minimalist shots that are more common on this blog, is that they do not require such enlargements: the shapes and elements are bold and simple.
An avenue of trees in September on the Rode Hall Estate in South Cheshire. The road of course just leads the eye into the picture. Although in terms of left and right, the road cuts the picture in two by being in the centre, the focal point, the end of the road, is placed one third up from the bottom. This helps to give a sense of space and formality. Standing to the side so that the road came into the picture more from one side or the other did not look as effective...the formality of the composition was lost.
Fish weather vanes at Southport, Lancashire, England, U.K.
When taking photographs of architecture, converging verticals can be an issue, as you can see from the original small photo at the top of this post. Sometimes, you want to take a picture of a building, but you cannot get any further away from it than accross the street. This means that you have to use a wide andle lens to get the whole building in the frame, and you also have to point the camera upwards a little to get the top of the building in the frame. This creates the effect of converging verticals: where vertical lines appear to slope inwards. In olden days, professional photographers used special lenses which had a bellows extension in the the middle, so that the front elements of the lens could be angled independently of the rear elements. This expensive type of lens corrected this problem. The same correction can be made in Photoshop. Open your image in Photoshop, and draw a Marquee around the whole image using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Click on Edit and in the drop down menu, click on copy. Click on File and on the drop down menu click on New. In the box that appears, make sure that White is selected for the background and click on OK. In this new file window, click on Edit and in the drop down menu click on Paste. Your image will appear in this new file windo as a photoshop file. Click on View and in the drop down menu, click on Zoom Out. Click on Edit and in the drop down menu click on Transform, and in the new drop down menu, click on Distort. Little boxes will appear on the corners of your image and in the centre of the sides of the image. Place the cursor on the top right hand box, click and hold while dragging the mouse to the right. This will begin to distort the image so that converging vertical lines begin to become properly vertical. Repeat the procedure on the top left hand box and drag to the left. Repeat these two procedures until you are happy with the result. If the image appears too squat or flattened, click on the box in the centre of the top edge, and drag upwards. When you are fully happy with the image, double click on the image and photoshop will perform the transform. Then click on File/Save As and the file a new name and in the format box, click on the arrow and change the image from Photoshop to JPEG. Then click on Save. The effect can be seen in the above two photos. In addition, Auto contrast was used and colour saturation was increased in the final photo.
While you are in the Transform menu, you can see what the other effects do to your image such as Skew and Perspective.
