Golden light over the Great Ridge at Mam Tor in the Peak District, UK. But is it hard light or soft light?
Photography of any kind begins with light. Light is the key fundamental. It is our raw ingrediant as photographers. Whilst Landscape Photography doesn’t allow for us to change the light on a whim, we can still take control of it through our understanding of how light will impact our landscape photographs......
Doxy Pool atop The Roaches. An older shot of one of the landscape photography locations visited during my ‘One Day in the Peak District’. Why an older shot,? Find out below.
Manchester has always been a city of juxtaposition and in these photographs, I wanted to capture that juxtaposition. The vast high rise urban homes rising above the tranquil water top dwellings of others. Manchester’s transport isn’t restricted to just roads, trains, or tramways. The famous canals that run through the city centre and throughout Greater Manchester pay homage to the foundations of the city.
Understanding light is crucial for landscape photography because light is photography. It’s fundamental in shaping composition, creating depth and elevating the visual appeal of our images. And learning to observe light, rather than just see light, will place our photographs in a bracket above a large percentage of the masses…..
I was recently commisioned to photograph some low key fine art images of a sculptured art installation at a local park in Greater Manchester. Each of the set of eight wooden sculptures, dotted around a nature trail, posed it’s own unique challenge due to the location. Some of the sculptures set out in the open, others hidden deep in the woodland or recessed into hedgerow……
How often do we check ourselves? Question what we are doing? Deliberate whether the choices we make, the actions we take and the things we see are the most conjucive to the photograph we want to create? And if we do ask those questions, how truthful or relevent are the answers we give ourselves?
It’s one of the biggest obstacles in photography. And perhaps the most compelling reason to even book onto a one-to-one photography workshop. It’s a stage of learning, and one that many photographers get trapped at.
It is far too easy to ruin an otherwise beautiful shot by overthinking it.How do I know this? I’ve done it, loads of times! And quite often, I’ve done it in pursuit of things unnecessary for the shot the landscape has presented.
Yep, I’ve been THAT photographer. You know the one….
One of the bad photography habits I've gotten myself into over the last few years is 'whatifid-ism'. Basically the habit of looking back on a photograph, a photograph that I'd once been really happy with, and had loads of great memories of creating, and tearing it apart as I now have new found knowledge or a different way of doing things…….
Will this Peak District view make it into the list?
The Peak District has fantastic views throughout its 540+ square miles. It is an area for iconic landscape photography and whilst it would be nigh on impossible to list every single fantastic Peak District view in this one blog post, it is possible to give you my opinion on 5 of the best for landscape photography. And I say ‘best’ Peak District views because these are 5 views of the Peak District that any landscape photographer that is visiting the Peak District would definitely want to take in, and are listed in no particular order.
It may seem strange to think of a photograph being able to elicit powerful human emotions, but this is exactly what a good photograph does. So why do we photographers devote more conversations, more column inches, more videos and more podcasts to the technical side of photography rather than the artistic and emotional side?
The beautiful view from midway up Chrome Hill in the Peak District National Park - my first shoot of 2022
….The truth of the matter is that I did far less landscape photography in the second half of the year than the first. There is no doubt that I lost some of my mojo for it. I love the adventure of landscape photography as much as the actual photography itself. Going somewhere I’ve never been before. Exploring and finding a view point that makes me go wow! That’s the part I love, far more so than pressing the shutter on my camera…..
….Instantly I was stuck with the location. I could envisage mist, some dappled side light, and the possibility of a shadowy figure heading towards me. I’ve got a lot to thank that photographer for - unfortunately I have no idea of his/her name - as I instantly decided that I had to visit this place and create the shot that I could see in my minds eye…..
A beautiful cloud inversion over Castleton and the Hope Valley in the Peak District National Park
This week I finally managed to photograph a Cloud Inversion. A Landscape Photography aim of mine for quite some time, and I thought I'd share some tips so you could have the best chance of forecasting one for yourself
Yep, that’s correct. the Lake District National Park only has one official lake; Bassenthwaite Lake. the rest are all tarns, meres or waters by name…..there’s one for your pub quiz bank!
In reality of course, there are many more, with sixteen large bodies of water and seventy six smaller ones that could still typically be classed as a lake.
And so let’s take a look at a few that, as a photographer, you should not miss.
‘Can I ask a stupid question’?…….But it rarely is a stupid question.
Something that I’ve come to understand over the last couple of years is that if you don’t know, you don’t know. And that actually makes the question itself really difficult to even ask. Why would you ask how, for example, you would set up a tripod, if you don’t know that you are setting it up incorrectly in the first place?……….
The view from Higger Tor across Hope Valley. Mam Tor, The Great Ridge, Win Hill and Lose Hill all visible rising up over Castleton and it’s Slate Mine
However, despite checking the weather forecast thoroughly the night before, I arrived to find nothing but grey low cloud blocking any light and reducing visibility down to not much. So another bust…..all part of the landscape photography deal here in the UK.
And so to the third visit. We had almost clear skies. There was a bank of cloud low on the horizon, but this would just serve to diffuse some of the light and create haze rather than block the light completely.
1/1000th of a second at iso 6400
This week I have been shooting primarily with the Canon RF 800mm f/11. This compact (for an 800mm) form prime lens comes with 4 stops of image stabilisation (in conjunction with the Canon EOS R5 or R6) and a constant aperture of f/11.
every image ever captured by way of a camera did the first part of photography really well: it captured light and produced an image of that moment in time. And, without understanding, you may think that that’s it, nothing more…..your work here is done!
But it is in the second half of the word photograph that the key is held, certainly if you are looking create more than just a ‘photo!’…..
Printing a Photobook: ‘In the era of digital photography and social media, it’s so easy for an image to just become data on a forgotten file hidden on a hard drive. Or to be viewed for a fleeting moment as we share on various social media sites, becoming almost disposable and forgotten the second the viewer scrolls to the next image. For those reasons, for me, printing my images has always been a big part of my workflow. But, even then, it’s difficult to curate into a meaningful viewing experience….short of having a gallery’
….There is a photography show on which I am set to guest soon as a ‘feature’ interview. The show, which will air in a couple of weeks is recording in a few days and I am currently sat here looking through the questions that will be used to help the show flow (I will link through to the channel at the bottom of this blog where you can watch previous episodes and subscribe).
One of the questions is which two landscape shots of mine are my favourites…….