sussex

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.

I found this shot sitting in my archives, it was taken last year at Goodwood. The 'Goodwood festival of speed' is an annual hill climb held a Goodwood park and features sports cars from multiple generations and genres.

Sitting in front of the stately home, this amazing structure, constructed from girders with Landrovers mounted on them was a sight to behold, it has a really surreal quality to it, an angular monolith.

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.

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.

I've been trying to practice taking action shots in preparation for the Formula 1 races i'm going to later in the year. I've also been trying to improve my knowledge of exposure and have been metering manually.

Neither of which were as successful as I wanted in this shot, because it came out a bit over exposed and blurry! :-) That's said I still like the movement conveyed and action frozen in the shot. If I had of exposed a little under, I would've got the water a lot crisper.

The dog was having great fun chasing sticks into the water and i've got a couple more pics of him that I may post in the next couple of days.

Another shot from West Witterings, our local beach. It was super windy this day and there was a lot of sand blowing around, some got in the lense too :-( so i didn't hang around for long.

This is one of the shots I liked from the session and is a bit of a change for me. Normally I go for a super contrasty sky and will usually shoot with a ND grad, this time the sky is blown out , and I quite like the result, it has a more graphic, stripped down feel.

We're in the West Country for a few days and weather permitting, there should be some nice shots to be had :-)

This was taken at the same beach as the recent coast series. Still busy at work, so not much time to post and right, things should get back to normal soon.

Hello! It seems like an absolute age since I last posted. It's not for any reason, other than that life is busy at the moment!

Thankyou all so much for commenting on the last post 'Windswept'. It is now my most commented post to date and meant a lot to hear from everyone. I have just printed and framed that shot and it will be hanging on the wall somewhere in the house by the weekend.

Tonight's shot is the last of the beach series I shot at West Wittering a couple of weeks ago. It's again another long exposure as you can seem from the guy walking his dog through frame. I decided to leave that in though as I quite like it.

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.

This is the penultimate shot from the West Wittering series that i'm going to post, and is one of my favorites. I think the object in frame is the high tide marker, and is sat at the end of the water breaks that run out from the beach.When the tide comes in is comes right up to the base of the pyramid.

I was actually caught out just before taking this shot; further down the beach near to water, the tide comes in surprisingly quickly and it was only when the waves started lap at the legs of the tripod, that I thought I better make a hasty retreat further up the beach :-)

Apologies for not posting yesterday, but we were down at the coast again, this time at Beachy Head near Eastbourne, it was a fantastic, sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky. I'll be putting up the shots in the next couple of days.

Next one in the series, this time in black and white. EXIF data is incomplete at this time as i don't have it to hand, I will update later.

Today's shot is again from the beach, a little more abstract/arty this time. It is processed in an obviously different palette to yesterday's , but is truer to what was there at the time. for one, the sun has pretty much gone down it was twilight/almost dark, it's only the length of the exposure that makes it feel like daylight.

Thanks everyone for the comments on yesterdays, they are warmly appreciated.

I think this is the first shot i've posted that was taken with my new Nikon, the D300. I'm really happy with the quality of the pictures it takes, especially in low light, the CMOS censor seems to produce less noise than the D200, which is great.

This shot is at my most local beach, on the south coast of England. I drove down in the evening to catch a few shots which i'll post in the coming days, this one is a long exposure as I'm keen to practice some new techniques. I've been experimenting with some filters and used a graduated ND ( 2 stop) on this one.

I sometimes drive down the coast to take photograph, its a 30-40 minute drive from where we live, and sometimes the coast can be spectacluar. On this day Idoya and I had walked along the beach, on a pretty grotty winters day. the tide was in and it was wet and window,so we stopped for some lunch. to our amazement when leaving the cafe , the tide had gone right out and the sun appeared to make a really enjoyable afternoon with lots of opportunities to shoot.

Another shot from our day in West Wittering, suddenly someone came riding up on a horse, all backlit in the sun, so i had to take a couple of pictures :-)

Another shot from the West Wittering series, as the sun began to dip, what had be a really dreary day became a beautiful evening with lovely pink and violet tones.