landscapes

As any one in the U.K. will know, this has been one of coldest winter spells we have had in a number of years ,with temperatures set to drop below -5c this evening the media are dubbing it 'The big freeze', and rightly so! There is widespread snow and ice and as a consequence everyone is complaining about traffic problems especially in the lead up to the holidays

I actually love the cold weather - especially the snow - as it makes a change from the usual grey damp weather we usually experience here around Christmas time.

For one thing the landscapes around here are stunning at the moment and I got the opportunity to get out on Saturday and take a few shots.

Today's post is a subject I have photographed before in the summer ( see Oak 1 and Oak 2).

It was interesting for me to revisit this spot and see the tree without it's leaves. I did manage to get a couple of shots from a similar angle to the previous 2 and tried compositing one over the other - which was cool. I may post a comparison next.

Moving on from that, the obvious next step will be to take another couple of shots in Spring and Autumn and complete the series.

It's been ages since I've posted any new photographs on Lightflows, but was prompted back into action this week.

It was my great pleasure to appear on BBC1's Countryfile program this evening to help Chris Packham and Jo Brand launch the programmes 'Wild and Wonderful' Photography competition.

The photography section of the CountryFile programme was partially filmed at Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, a location famous for being the home of Winnie the Pooh.

Filming took place in the last week of April and I was pleased to arrive on location just after sunrise to capture these early morning mists. A number of the shots taken on the day made it into the final show. All in all it was a fun afternoon and the production team and presenters, Chris Packham and Jo Brand were a really good laugh.

This Episode is available to view on the BBC iPlayer here until next Sunday 17th May.

This is definitely one of my favorite shots of the year, the recent hoar frosts have created simply the most spectacular cold weather I have ever seen in England. On days like this I feel grateful to be a photographer, and appreciated how lucky I am to live in the beautiful countryside that surrounds Guildford.

This image is actually a stitch of 3 separate exposures, the widest lens I had on me was a 24mm , and that didn't quite show the whole panorama that I was seeing, so I re-constructed the shot using PTGui to stitch the images together. The color's have been slightly enhanced, with a warm cast removed from the snow.

Update

I've just been looking through some of the other shots taken on this day and realised that the pictures I stitched were taken on my Canon G10 not the Nikon D300, I've updated the EXIF info accordingly

I was going to post another one of the shots from Morocco, but we travelled to Ronda today and I shot quite a bit of new stuff. We spend a few hours in the town, which is fantastic btw, and also visited this place, the bull fighting ring. Personally I am against bull fighting, but whatever your position on the subject, it is a beautiful place to visit. It's one of the oldest and most famous bull fighting rings in Spain and is steeped in character.

A storm had just passed and the light was creeping out from behind some brooding clouds, the bull ring half in and half out of shadow, I couldn't resist shooting a panoramic sequence. On returning home, I decided to try a 'little planet' creation. It's the first time i've tried one of these and, although not technically perfect, I am happy with the results of my first attempt. I hope you like it.

This is a shot of one of my favorite trees, albeit a background feature in this image. I've been struggling to keep up with posting recently as my photography and web business has really taken off, which is good.

One of the other shots featuring this tree can be found here... Oak 1 and here Oak 2

This is probably the last in the series of posts and is one of my favorites.

One more from the current misty dawn series, I have one or two more to post and then that's it. This is one is taken just after sun up.

Up early this morning and got out to shoot the sunrise, there was a wonderful mist hanging over the landscape this morning, it was so beautiful , it makes you realise you are lucky to be alive.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last one, this shot is not massively disimillar the last, but I like the rays raking across the tree and the warmth to it.

You know summer has ended and you are in Autumn when the mist starts to appear in the mornings.

This happens to be one of my favorite times of the year, for photography anyway. This particular morning there was a lot of fog and the sunshine was just breaking through. I'll be posting a few more of these in the coming days.

Well, it's seems i'm finding it harder and harder to find time to post at the moment. My VFXY ranking is slipping all the time, if anyone cares to add me as their favorite maybe I can climb back up :-)

The reason for the lack of posts is i've started a new business, which is going well, I just happen to be spending more time building other people's blogs that posting on my own.

With all that out of the way , I can talk about this entry. We've had lots of rain this summer in England, the only positives I can take from that are : there have been some fantastic cloudscapes to shoot!

This is the calm after the storm and I have resisted processing this one much, i'm trying to focus on natural colours and improve my photography in camera.

This is another shot of the windmill we visited in Goodwood the other day.

We spotted this fantastic old windmill on the way back from the coast, after trying to find a route to it through the country side we eventually made it.

It's in a really beautiful location, high on a hill, with fantastic views all around. I'm going to post a couple more shots of this subject.

Next in this series, this is one of my favorites in terms of composition.

Another shot from the field taken on my return trip from the Goodwood festival of speed. I took a number of shots and will be posting the variations over the coming days.

I went to the Goodwood festival of speed today, as I'm building my porfolio of motorsport images. I got some pleasing shots of the cars, and on the way back spotted this wonderful corn field.

Thanks for all the comments on the Poppy shot, much appreciated feedback. This is another photo over the Guildford fields, and not as naturally beautiful as the others, i'm happy with the colours.

I have one more shot to post from the series, and then we're away for a few days in Austria, a big party, so I'm hoping to get some good portraits :-)

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Another shot from the fields near Guildford. This is one of my favorite photos from the series.

I wanted to catch the beautiful back light of the poppies in the hedge row being lit up by the sun going down, I'm happy with just being able to catch a glimpse of the rays without the sun blowing out.

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This is the second shot I'm posting from the session I had yesterday, and was photographed in the fields near Guildford.

This is one of the many rural footpaths that cuts through farm land.

Not much processing on this one, just a little saturation boost to combat the RAW desaturated look from the D200, I wanted it to feel as natural as possible.

Scratch the above, on reflection and a little fiddling I decided a mono treatment worked better on this one! If you're interested the original post is here Corn field original

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Wow, I just noticed that this is my 100th post! Happy Birthday to me :-)

Firstly, thanks for all the comments about the dog, he really was having a whale of a time and was a pleasure to shoot.

I actually got out and shot some new material today. I'm lucky that now i'm working from home for myself, I can pop down to the local coffee shop and work from there. Our local council have been kind enough to provide free WiFi for a year so I'm making the most of it.

My ride to town involves cutting through some fields, which are full of young corn and look amazing right now. I've got a bunch of pictures i'm happy with and will be posting them in the coming days.

I was going to post another shot from the coast and then I caught this shot the other day and thought i'd put it up. We had some amazingly voluminous clouds the other evening and the light was incredible, really showing the shapes off in the clouds.

This is a close up of one section of a big tower of clouds, personally I find the shapes really beautiful, like you'd imaging heaven or something like an italian fresco. Didn't notice the 2 birds enter frame at the time, but I like them in the shot that's why I chose the title. This is pretty much straight out of the camera as well, just a small constrast adjustment and that's it.

Lastly , I have my first professional shoot tomorrow, some fashion pictures , which i'm really excited about.

This was shot is in the fields near to our house, there was a strange weather system coming in that day, you can see the low lying mist on the horizon, as it was creeping over the green grass it looked really cool.

This is the last of the shots from the foggy series I had shot in February, seems like a while ago as Spring is now definitely in the air. These are some of the other shots from this series. here and here & here

I have some great news! Tomorrow is my last day as an employee, after nearly nine years in my day job, I am leaving to run Lightflows as company and it feels great! Through this site and from contacts i've made from it, I will be pursuing my career as a photographer and (part time) web designer :-D

What this all means is that the site will be updated far more regularly and the new features i've been planning are going to be added. I will also be displaying some of my work in a few exhibitions over the summer, more news on this to follow.

I was in Wales at the weekend to shoot a downhill mountain bike race. At the top they had chopped the whole forest down, in an industrial style, the ground ripped up and the tree extracted, literally.

An interesting place , definitely. Perched in the wasteland over-looking the Severn estuary.

Very unexpectedly and pleasantly surprising, we had a reasonable amount of snow at the weekend! Probably the most i've seen in the South of England for 10 years and in April too!

Idoya and I popped out pretty early before everyone had chance to disturb the pristine white covering and got first tracks at the local hill :-)

I've got a bunch of pictures that i'd like to post, the first being the burnt common again, featured in other entries on the site. I tried to frame this one a similarly as possible to the others, but found it difficult to find my bearings in the flat light.

The forestry commission has actually started to chop down the bracken now , as can be seen by the stumps that pepper the landscape. There are still some interesting shots to be had though.

This is another of the shots from the foggy series I had shot last month, again these were taken at the same burnt common as these , here and here & here

This area is a small enclosure of bracken that was burnt badly, it has a really eerie atmosphere in the fog, and I really like the look of the landscape, it's very unusual.

On another note, i'm going to shoot some new material next week , weather permitting, fingers crossed :-)

Well, still got the cold, so haven't got much to say, sniffle , sniffle :-D This was shot last year in Autumn at a local lake to us, called Winkworth Arboretum.

This is one of the shots from the foggy series I had shot a couple of weeks ago now.These are taken at the same burnt common spot I have posted images of previously, here and here.

I knew I'd want to go and shoot this place when the fog came in, it had a really eery feeling with the mist and barren landscape.

As promised yesterday, this is the wider version of the shot, I'm torn between which I prefer, but I think this one edges it slightly.

This was taken last year in the fields near us, there is some beautiful rolling countryside around here and this tree always catches my attention when I take a shortcut through the backroads to our house.

I'm going to post a wider version tomorrow.

Hello again, i'm back, apologies for not posting the last few days , I've been busy with work and house stuff! Anyway, as it's late , I'll keep it short tonight.

This is one of the shots I took last week in the fog of which I'd been promising to post. So here it is.

Thanks to everyone on the feedback on the last picture,I know that style is not to everyones taste, but I enjoy the experimentation, it's good to hear different reactions.

This is the first of the shots I'm posting from our visit to the coast last weekend. We visited Beachy Head , which is one of the highest coastal cliffs in the U.K. For that reason it is a notorious suicide spot, and was immortalized on film in Quadrophenia , the mod movie from the 70's. It is never the less a place of staggering beauty, the cliffs roll , ripple and undulate along the coast in quite an amazing way.

Anyway with the history lesson out of the way :-) This is one of the many trees that pop up along the coast and I'm assuming that it's shaped like this due the high winds that run along the coast, the trees all seemed to face the same way, so that's the basis of my assumption. Maybe some bright horticulturist will be along and can put me right!

Lastly, I agonized over the crop for this one, and eventually settled on the post, although I felt that less negative space to the left of frame was preferable, I also tried a square crop. I really couldn't choose, Idoya chose this one, which I was leaning toward anyway, so this is the one.

Here are the other 2, the Square and Tighter crop I'd be interested to hear which one you prefer.

For February the weather today has been amazing, sun all day long. We've been sitting outside on the deck for the first time this year taking pictures of the cats playing and just relaxing in general.

Being such a clear day, I thought there might be a good sunset , so we went for a walk at our local mount, Gibbet Hill, which overlooks the intriguingly named Devils Punchbowl an area of natural beauty.

Sure enough , as the sun went down, we were treated to a gorgeous misty sun set. Here's one of the better ones that I took today.

It looks like its going to be a great day tomorrow as well, so we are off the the coast with friends, I'm looking forward to the photo opportunities.

This is the second shot i'm posting of the burnt common at Thursley and features, albeit a long way off, Idoya, my fiancee and chief supporter of Lightflows :-)

The shot is, as you an see, pretty heavily processed. It was a very overcast grey day, so mainly the sky had been pulled a lot and had a grad added to it, I'm quite happy with the results, the drama and the mood , although i wouldn't normally push my landscapes this far in post, it feels right on this occasion.

I'd been keen to hear your thoughts..

Today's post is a local shot for a change! After the Urban/City shots I'm also back on to my favorite subject, landscapes.

This shot is of my local common/heath that was ravaged by a massive fire 18months ago. BBC news report.

As you can see the ground and vegetation is still recovering and makes for a dramatic picture. I was hoping for a bit of early morning fog to give some separation of the trees & scrubland from the ground, but found this interesting path instead, which I like.

I definately find this landscape a challenge to shoot and will be going back for more in different lighting and atmospheric conditions.

Following on from yesterday's post, where Rose spotted some buildings in the background, I decided to post another shot from the lake side with one of the cabins in view.

According to the locals , the lake is a popular fishing spot and these are , what i consider to be , quite luxurious cabins for overnight fishing trips, hence the title of the post. I guess it gets pretty cold up around these parts, so maybe a tent wouldn't suffice.

The lake is littered with smallish buildings and outdoor toilets, which make for stark constrasting subject matter and interesting compositions, as in this post.

Lastly,this B&W was processed in DXO and then a bit of Photoshop, I'm thinking of posting a desaturated colour version of this one in the next few days. Thanks to everyone who commented on the last one and well spotted Rose!

Evening all. Well, no forest shots again i'm afraid, I seem to be coming down with some sort of bug/cold, so have been taking it easy the past few evening's and resting up for work.

I had hoped to get some new material for the site, but the weather has be atrocious in the South East, if not most of the country the past few days.

Instead i'm posting some material from the archives, back to New Zealand and Poolburn reservoir. This shot is one of my personal favorite B&W's, I have a colour version hanging in my living room and just love the tranquility of this place, hence the title. This shot was taken in the same session as this one which is also another personal favorite.

Hopefully i will have a bit more energy in the next few days and some shots with some colour to post too!

I'm coming to the end of my Prague series now, as i'd like to post some more U.K. shots , I do have a couple of portraits that i'm going to post over the next couple of days, a couple of interesting characters :-) , but then i'm done. This shot was taken at the airport in Prague and was shot through glass, so it's probably not a sharp as i'd like. We were on our way home and a huge storm was coming in and the sky started to look really menacing. I'm have an alernative angle and toning of this shot which i'll post tomorrow, it would be interested to here which one you prefer and why.

This freshy mowed field caught my eye on a walk from Hope Cove along the coast. The black and white conversion was processed in Aperture initially , with some additional tweaking in Photoshop.

This ice lake is a stich of a couple of seperate shot which explains the distortion in at the sides of the image and the apparently super wide angle lense. Again, it's from my time spent in New Zealand, i like the tones in the sky and the way these are reflected in the ice.

This shot was taken early in the morning in the autumn over the South Downs. A work colleague of mine and I had got up early to shoot exactly this kind of morning stillness and were rewarding after a bit of driving around to find something like this.

This is one of a series of shots at this location, Poolburn reservoir that pushed me to get more serious about my photograpy. It's a wider version of this shot.I didn't process the image except for the raw converson, as i wanted to keep the muted, desaturated tones and color of this very special morning.

A colleague and i had arrived on set to find a beautiful early morning frost, we decided to take some shots before work started. The doorway is a fishermans toilet at the lake side, i love the way it's just there in the middle of nowhere.

I've included a GoogleMaps location for anyone who want to know the location of this spot.