Posts in Category: England
8/26/2011: Manicured English Morning
While at the British Bird Fair we stay at the Greetham Valley Golf Club and Convention Center about 12 miles up the hill and over into the next valley from Rutland Water. As you might expect the landscape is rather on the manicured (not to say manufactured) side…it is, after all, a golf course. Still, of an English morning, or evening, before or after the golfers, it has its charm. Especially when capped by an outrageous midlands sky.
And, since the landscape is already sculpted to please the eye (and the nine-iron), all a photographer has to do is frame and expose.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, Sharpness, and impact.
And, you only have to turn around to catch the Brown Hare bounding. (I cheated here. The Hare is a shot from the evening before…but they were out behind me on the morning too!) You might imagine, if you like, that the Hare is in charge of the manicure.
P500 at 810mm equivalent field of View, f5.7 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/25/2011: Peacock Butterfly, Rutland Water UK
Somehow the Peacock butterfly is all the more striking for being British. It is such a surprise, at least to me, to see this large, showy butterfly in the mild marshes and meadows of old England. Here it is feeding in the rushes and cattails along the edge of Rutland Water, on the unfortunately named Devil’s bit Scabious, right behind the Optics Marque at the Great British Birding Fair. What a treat!
It was not easy to photograph, as it hung back well into the rushes, where it was always partly obscured, making both framing and focus very tricky…and since the wind was blowing hard enough to keep everything in constant motion…but with the Nikon Coolpix P500’s long equivalent zoom, I was able to reach out to it for a few keepers.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/100th @ ISO 175. 2) 466mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/160th @ ISO 160. 3) 810mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/125th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
8/24/2011: Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home.
It was a bumper year for Ladybirds in England (or Ladybugs as we call them here in North America). This is evidently a good thing, as the native species are threated in England by the Harlequin Ladybug, an invasive imposter. I found Ladybirds all along the trails around Rutland Water.
Just for fun you might want to take a look at the wiki on Ladybird, Ladybird fly away home. The history of the nursery rhyme and speculations as to its meaning are interesting.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close UP mode. 1) 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160, 2) 263mm, f5.2 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, and 3) 32mm, f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/23/2011: Rutland Water, Rutland UK
I am just back from a few days in England, working the British Birding Fair for ZEISS Sports Optics. This is the view, more or less, from our tent. A small lagoon at Rutland Water, part of a large wildlife refuge on the shores of a major reservoir. It is a typical English Midlands view…never the same for more than a few moments. It might look like this second image a day, or an hour, later.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 1) 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160 and 2) 23mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. On 1) I used dueling graduated filter effects, darken from the top, lighten from the bottom, to increase the apparent dynamic range.
9/1/2010: Rutland Water UK
I had to crawl between a tent and flap, where, strictly speaking I was not supposed to be, to get to this image out over Rutland Water at the British Birding Fair, but honestly, who could resist? This is England at its best…or maybe on its best behavior, at least as far as weather goes. And, of course, it only lasted a few moments. Within 30 the sky closed and within 60 it was raining again. I especially like the mottled sun on the foreground.
iPhone 4 HDR, two exposures in ProHDR (which now has an auto mode that analyzes the dynamic range of the image and computes its own two exposures), sharpened and contrast adjusted in PhotoGene and uploaded to my SmugMug site with SmugShot.
8/31/2010: English butterflies
Predictably, I spent my first day in England in a meeting room at the Greetham Valley Golf and Country Club (it was a working trip after all). We only got let out for lunch…and only 30 minutes at that due to a tight agenda. Still, when I got to the dinning room and looked out the window to see my first ever European Peacock butterfly, I had to run back to my room to get a camera with a longer lens! (Simon King, well known British naturalist and film-maker was among our number, and he identified the butterflies for me.) The wind was blowing hard and the rainy day light was subdued. The butterflies were hanging on the flowers for dear life as they tossed wildly about, and staying closed up tight most of the time in the wind. Still I managed a couple of more or less record shots of the Peacock (top) and the Little Tortoiseshell (bottom)…both life butterflies for me. And yes, I still managed to get my lunch down and back to the meeting room in time!
Long-tel-macro threw the background well out of focus for both shots. In the top shot the butterfly is framed against the hill 300 yards behind, but even the leaves inches behind the Tortoiseshell show good bokeh. That is the magic of the long-tel-macro.
Canon SX20IS @ 560mm equivalent and macro @ 1) f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160 and 2) f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 400. Programmed auto.
A bit of Recovery in Lightroom for the flowers, more than usual Fill Light for the colors in the wings in the subdued light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Germany and England 2010.
8/30/2010: English Mushroom
Just a simple straightforward portrait of an interesting mushroom found on my walk through the golf courses at Greetham Valley Country Club in the UK. A view from slightly above ground level to catch as much of the form as possible, taken with the flip out LCD and a medium long tel-macro setting on the Canon SX20IS. It is all about those curves and that texture! The clover head gives a bit a of scale. This was a big mushroom.
190mm equivalent field of view and Macro @ f5.0 @ 1/125th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, slight cropping for composition, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Germany and England 2010.
8/29/2010: Greetham Valley Country Club
Happy Sunday!
I visit the Oakham area of England once a year for the British Birding Fair, the largest gathering of birders in the known universe (for more on the BBF take a look at my post on the ZEISS blog). It is held at Rutland Water, a reservoir, which is home to the Anglian Water Reserve. Oakham, small sleepy one-pub town that it is, surrounded by small sleepy one-pub towns, is not exactly equipped for the annual inundation of birders. Those of us who have to stay there are for the three days fill every available hotel space. The local schools rent out space for sleeping bags on the gym floors. We used to stay at the Barnsdale Resort (not to be confused with the Barnsdale Lodge), on the hill overlooking Rutland Water on the other side from the Fair, but this year we moved to a golf club and convention center, a bit further away, near the village of Greetham.
And all that is to explain why I have taken photos of a golf course…not something I am in the habit of doing…but during the BBF (which is work for me) I get only a few moments a day to consider photography…and it is my one visit a year to England, so I do, always, consider photography. I take what I can get, and within walking distance of the hotel this year, golf course was all you could get.
This is an HDR image from two exposures on the Canon SX20IS, combined in Photomatix Lite, and refined in Lightroom.
I actually like it, despite its obvious golf-courseishness, for the range of greens, and the variety of textures and shapes. No one can say the designer of the course was insensitive to the particular English beauty of the countryside. He (or she) preserved enough of the natural landscape and existing trees so that the native beauty comes through, and actually augmented it with the decorative pools and paths. Very English.
It is an idealized English landscape, under one of England’s typical skies, looking most like a well mannered 19th century painting on the drawing room wall.
I am tempted, being Sunday, to liken it to some folks vision of the Garden of Eden, but then all I would be left with saying is that, while I can appreciate its beauty and appeal, it is not mine. I’d like to think I could be at home in a much wilder Eden, without feeling the need to making it so homey…if you know what I mean.
But then, I am not a golfer, even of the Sunday variety.
9/5/2009
Late Light Across Rutland Water
Being limited to the early evening all my shots of Rutland Water (Leichestershire UK) share a similar light. This was not taken on the same day as the sheep shots, and you can see it was a bit later. Could not resist the view though. This is a mild telephoto shot, and the perspective is flattened by the lens setting, and you can see the effects of the atmosphere (never completely free of moisture in England) between me and the lake.
Sony DSC H50 at about 120mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
From Rutland Water.
9/4/2009
Rutland Water with Sky!
A brooding sky over Rutland Water. This one is all about atmosphere. Raining on and off. Dark earth, dark water, dark sky.
Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the sky. Punch and Sharpen Landscape presets. Blackpoint to the right.
From Rutand Water.