See my award-winning shot - now in official Spider Gallery

I announced a while ago that Haystack and Tracks reached nominee status, one step before winner, in the 5th Annual Black and White Spider Awards...

Official Notification

Well, yesterday I got an email from the Awards Team giving me the official Nominee Button, telling me that my Nominee shot is now in their official gallery and that my certificate would be sent in the post sometime in April

Great news and it gave me such a lift. I'll definitely be framing and hanging the certificate in pride of place on the wall!

Haystack and Tracks

You can buy cards, posters and canvases featuring this image from my online store...



comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Another view of Merrivale Tor

I'm just going through the last of the shots from my recent outing to Dartmoor during the thaw. I've got a cute shot of some sheep that I hope will make it through the digital darkroom.

Tor and outbuilding

Merrivale Tor View

If you've seen my recent postings, you'll know that Merrivale is near Princetown in the heart of Dartmoor. I'm not sure what the hut on the left is, but it's fairly close to some farm buildings so is no doubt to do with that.

I relaxed my normal rules for this shot. I rarely do landscape shots without something remarkable (to me, anyway) to include for compositional purposes. In this case though, I just wanted to make a good shot of the Tor and put it in context, more of a record shot than my usual.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Wowee! I made it as a nominee in the 5th Annual Spider B&W Awards!!

I was dumbfounded to find out I made it to nominee status in the 5th Annual Spider B&W Awards!!

Haystack and Tracks

I'm over the moon about it because the winners get chosen from the "nominees". Here is the image, it got chosen for the Nature category:

Haystack and Tracks

...and here is the Spider Awards page it's on.

I didn't get chosen as a winner though :( so that means I just got pipped at the post! but who cares? A nominee! Woohoo!!

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Another from Dartmoor in thaw

Another fresh out of my digital darkroom

On the road out of Princetown

This was the approach road to the shot I posted the other day. I'm standing in a lay-by with the last of the snow. What remains is to be found only in the lee of the granite walls that lazily zig-zag across the moors here.

Merrivale Tor Approach, Nr Princetown, Dartmoor

I'm stood right next to a big pile of dirty snow that was probably cleared off the road, judging by the amount of gravel in it. The jumble of rocks atop the hill in the distance is Merrivale Tor and Princetown is a few miles behind me as I took the shot.

I'm an image tart...

I must admit to bringing my image-tart approach to bear on this one. Only small changes but they had a big impact. So what am I confessing to? I cloned out an aerial on the house, a signpost at the end of the road and, horror of horrors I extended the left hand wall a little at the end to close off the left hand turn there. Why?

The aerial and the signpost were signs of the outside world and I wanted to emphasise the isolation of the place—if you go there you'll know what I mean about its isolation.

As for extending the wall on the left hand edge; the road comes to a t-junction and the walls curve left and right. Unfortunately, even though it was very small, the curve of the left turn and the lighter road surface took the eye out of the shot to the left.

By extending the curve of the left hand wall, instead the eye gets pushed back in to where I want it to go. A typical journey through the shot probably follows the lead-in lines, lingers on the puddle of meltwater and sky's reflection, follows the snow/wall, hits the road, gets curved in again to the small house and then on to the tor.

Which is nice because that's just what I wanted, each major feature visited by the eye in turn :)

Contrast masking

I learned a new technique earlier today that I used for (one of the layers on) this image. Many thanks to Peter Cox for his informative tutorial on contrast masking, a technique brought over from the days of the wet darkroom. In short - take a copy of the background layer (on your out-of-the-camera shot in Photoshop), desaturate the new layer, change the blend mode to overlay, invert it, apply huge radius Gaussian Blur, done :)


comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Life on Tharsis

A warm as toast abstract this time. What is it? Answers on a postcard please....

Life on Tharsis

I had a fanciful exploration in my inner vision today. In it I ventured onto Mars and followed the landscape to a mountainous region called Tharsis.
Approaching from the southern plains, I could see a series of plateaus extending as far as the eye could see. And I could see they were dotted by strange patches of light. My curiosity at such a sight pulled me on faster and, as I got closer, just in the lee of the first, the soft glow resolved itself into this strange vista.

Life on Tharsis

At first I couldn't believe my eyes. I'd found a strange form of brachoid life growing within small islets of light. By some freakish effect unique to this area, the very slow lava flows become capped by a semi-transparent glassy mineral and are veined through by a latticework of dark bands.

The brachoids only seemed to be growing where the illumination from the hot bubbling lava below was brightest, and even then, only in well-defined small areas such as this one.


Where did you go in your inner vision today?

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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During the melt on Dartmoor

Here's another one that worked out ok from my outing onto Dartmoor the other day... what do you think?

Merrivale Tor

Just up the road from Princetown I spotted this opportunity. I was looking for shots that captured a bit of the winter character of Dartmoor and so I had my "shot radar" working overtime. I spotted this scene developing as I drove, luckily their was a stopping place just round the corner from where my radar first started "pinging".

Merrivale Tor on Dartmoor, near Princetown

I tried a few different points of view and this is one that worked out well, I thought. How about you?

When I saw how it combined the tor, open moor and granite walls, snowy in their lee, I thought this was the one to go for. Dartmoor in winter can be so harsh—and that's when the weather's pleasant! So "harsh" is what I wanted to emphasise with the shot, which I hope I've achieved.

And typical of the real, non-postcardy view of the world that I prefer, it was good to see some jury rigged fencing, together with some nameless metal-tubing thingy, carelessly cast off to one side—being "stored outside" in farmer parlance!

It was quite a difficult shot to tame in the digital darkroom and I had a couple of false starts. Finally I hit on a method that brought out the image with the impact and visual qualities that first grabbed my attention.
What do you think?

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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The snow is retreating

Here's another shot from my trip to the moors the other day.

It's all melting

A little frost was left in the areas sheltered from the worst of the snow. A little way off you can see the snow still lying in the more exposed spots.

River on Lee Moor

This was taken heading from Cornwood up towards Lee Moor. It's quite typical of the rivers of the moors here in Devon when they pass through a fold or contour of land. This gives the shelter that allows the trees to grow in the otherwise exposed, inhospitable landscape of the wind-swept moors.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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On the margins of Dartmoor

I've been struggling against something in the last couple of months—I think it's been a desire to hibernate—but finally managed to get out with my camera today.

Waiting for...

I've been waiting for the weather to clear enough to let me get up into Dartmoor safely, while at the same time wanting enough snow to attempt some wintry captures.

Approaching Lee Moor from Cornwood

I was quite surprised to find that where I expected there to be lots of snow on the margins of the moors, only the sheltered spots seem to be retaining snow. On top of that, the weather forecasts have been pretty poor—when we were told to expect more snow, instead we got melting sunshine, pah!

Ok, I haven't yet got up into the moors proper, so maybe tomorrow. There's a definite margin/snow line as it gets more exposed heading up onto Dartmoor so I'll cross that on the next outing and see what possibilities that reveals. I'm hoping the Dartmoor Ponies will somehow feature.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Desiderata Poster - love it or hate it?

This just goes to show...

I Have Time

I took this picture ages ago now and returning to it recently, I wondered why it's not proved more popular. My artistic intent was to use it to portray a sense of facing the future, one with portent and hazard but with a feeling of being in control of your own destiny.

A serene horizon shows the outlook is potentially good but the overhead clouds curling down, almost reaching for you (the pillar), acts as an omen, warning of the potential danger that lies all round.

I processed it with that in mind, going for heavy contrast and lots of grainy, dirty noise in the sky. Maybe it was lacking something else? This is the one:

I Have Time

As I said, its not done so well in views, comments or with real-world galleries. But I was confident in its 'worth' as an image so I scratched around in my head for ideas and Desiderata (that great verse, starting "Go placidly amidst the noise and haste...") came to mind.

It's a wonderful verse, imparting great wisdom from a father to his son. Written in the 1920s it was, and still is to this day, great guidance for any teenager.

There's such a great fit between my artistic intent for the image and the verse, that I put the two together for a poster in my Zazzle store ...and a couple of days later I sold two!
Here it is with the verse in place.

Desiderata poster by HightonRidley
More Inspiration Posters

Yaay for me!

The lesson? Don't give up on an image that you feel is great. All you have to do is find the right venue and audience. Like that's easy! lol, but at least you know where to put your effort.

comments / feedback always welcome :)

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Another verse, Gothic this time...

Well, I don't know if I'm any good at this 'ere poetry, but needs must when the devil drives!

Folley's Dream

I created a poster that felt like it needed a verse. I was feeling a bit gothic and came up with:

In fright she fled
From love foreseen.

The fears she felt,
The tears she shed
- blood red! My heart!

In flight from Folly's Dream

Copyright © Highton-Ridley 2009

Here's the poster

Folly's Dream poster with verse by HightonRidley
Shop the other artwork at zazzle.co.uk

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Start of winter on Dartmoor

We've been having a bit of an Indian summer here recently, meaning the weather has been sunnier and warmer than usual for this time of year.

On the day the clocks go back

Start Of Winter On Dartmoor

The clocks went back for winter at the end of the 25th / start of the 26th October and this day was quite typical of the recent good weather. I was passing through Dartmoor on a visit to the Duchy Square gallery and saw this. I just had to stop off and capture the wonderful sky that was blanketing the view, looking west towards Tavistock and Gunnislake.

Oh, and the trip to the gallery went well, delivering the pony triptych (print) and Fencing In The Dunes (40x26inch canvas). I met a really interesting lady working there called Sarah, who did her fine art degree in London. I'm hoping to be able to have a chat about her experiences and thoughts about what makes art fine etc.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Seeking New Horizons

Another from the "promising" pile in the digital darkroom that I finally found the time to process.

"Devon Expressway" approaching Plymouth

Seeking New Horizons

Driving westwards down the A38... as an aside, calling it the "Devon Expressway" was far cheaper than turning it from an "A" road to a motorway—that's the way the powers that be think down this way sometimes! ..so, as I was saying, I was driving along, watching the sky "improve" as the weather worsened and threatened to get real bad.

It got good enough to deserve a stop and a capture, and I was lucky enough for a lay-by to turn up at the right time. I really liked the overpowering dark clouds in the middle distance, with beautiful skies beyond on the promising horizon. The progression of low, scudding clouds that seem to be sharing the same journey, adds to the overall feel of an exodus to the hope of new beginnings.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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A lakeside scene - in colour!

Unusually for me, this one seemed best in colour.

Lakeside Rest

I took this at the same time as my recent pony shots at the Miniature Pony Centre on Dartmoor.
 

Lakeside Rest

A simple scene, a bench overlooking a small lake complete with duck-house on stilts. It looked so restful, I was determined to give it a try but my god-daughter wanted to get back to petting the ponies instead. I'm glad she did because it was then that I took the pony shots that turned out so successfully—the ones I turned into a triptych.

So, does this pass muster for a colour shot? Are the colours lifelike? Are their any 'colour' rules of thumb I don't know about that I've heinously broken?

Regular readers will know I don't really do colour so I really am after some feedback :) Thanks!

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Another shortlisted for Photographer of the Year 2009

Haystack And Tracks

I posted earlier about Walking The Dogs being shortlisted for possible selection by the Editors in this year's Photographer of the Year competition. Well they've now chosen Haystack And Tracks too! Which is nice :)

Let's hope that the editors like them enough to shortlist them into the final :)

Haystack And Tracks

Here is the entry on the competition web site.


comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Introspective ...Sky Lambs

Before I feature an introspective here, it's usually been on my main site's home page first.

So if you want an early preview of the next inrospective, have a look there. It may be a few hours or a day or so before the new one goes up. You know how it is—the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay...

On being ready for the unexpected

or You make your own luck...

Sky Lambs—by the A303 in Wiltshire, Winter 2008
A beautifully framed and signed A2-sized print of this piece is available
at the Martin Bush Studio Gallery, Royal William Yard (map)

I was returning from my paying day job in Staines last year, following the A303 on its winding, wending way through the fields of Wiltshire, following the contours of the land. The lighting and weather conditions were real nice and I had been stopping every handful of miles, looking around for shots.

Making the capture

Spotting the shot

On this stop, I was trying to find an angle and composition for something entirely different but it wasn't working out from where I was.

I was about to walk back to my car and noticed these extremely low, scudding clouds coming at me quite fast. So low, I felt I could reach up and touch them and this was accompanied by a slight shiver as my mind felt their cold clamminess on the back of my hand. All this flashed through my mind as I quickly scanned around, looking for a decent backdrop for them. This scene looked promising and turned out to be just perfect, I hope you'll agree.

Exposure, ISO etc.

As I'd already been trying stuff in pretty much the same lighting conditions, I knew that leaving the camera set to ISO 100 was right for this one.

By default I always have the camera set to aperture priority so I can control the depth of field easily. I know that f9 at the wide-angle end of my zoom lens (17mm focal length) means pretty much everything from my feet to infinity will be in focus.

As an aside, this knowledge is great for when you can't spare any time fiddling with settings and have to make the capture before the opportunity is gone. As long as there is enough light around so that the shutter speed to accompany f9 (or whatever aperture you choose while composing) is fast enough for the scene. Knowing that everything is going to be sharply in focus means you have one less thing to worry about. Heck, you can even switch to manual focus and shave some time off how long before the camera is ready to take the shot.

Anyway, with this set-up it was straightforward to quickly exposure-lock on the brightest part of the sky, recompose and make the capture before the clouds were gone.

Digital darkroom

To summarise, I converted from RAW and pulled it into Photoshop where I cloned out a telegraph wire that was intruding into the top left corner. Also consigned to oblivion by the clone tool were a couple of distant birds that were just black specks on the clouds.

As an aside, some folks get a little prissy about this, but a serious photographer knows it's the distractions which draw the eye and that they can ruin a shot.
Being somewhat of an image tart, I have no such qualms—and by this, I mean that they didn't feature anywhere in my artistic intent and they were a distraction, therefore they didn't deserve to be in the image.

I then converted to black and white using a bw adjustment layer, juggling the sliders to get a close fit to the tonal relationships I was after. A bit of dodging and burning in the field to enhance its contours as I recalled them and that was it.

A final bit of sharpening and size reduction as I saved as a jpeg, and it was ready for upload.

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Introspective ...Hay303 Stacks

Hay303 Stacks

A shot of the fields alongside the A303 near Stonehenge,
just after hay making. Wiltshire, 2008.

Composing and making the capture

I had seen the landscape dotted with these obelisk-like haystacks over a regular journey I make. On this particular occasion the light was right, so I kept on diving off the road down farm tracks and entrances to fields, whenever it looked like there was half a chance of a shot.

I'd not long passed Stonehenge, heading west, when I got lucky with this and another shot. [Hint: note how you "make" your own luck by giving the good lady chance to smile on your efforts!]

Placing the horizon low for airiness

The rolling hills and low clouds with the clear sky above made the scene light and airy, and I knew to capture that feeling, I'd need to put the horizon low in the frame. The rule of thirds suggests that the horizon line should go about one third of the way up in a shot like this, but I wanted more emphasis, so placed it even lower.

Three's the charm

The eye tends automatically to "zone in" to odd-numbered groups, giving them power in a shot. The scene in front of me wouldn't play ball and insisted on four haystacks, but again I was lucky in that three went nicely on the skyline with one below it.

Exposure, ISO etc.

I always keep my Canon EFS 17-85mm IS USM mounted on the camera and again it was perfect for the shot. The day was beautifully bright, so I checked the ISO was set to 100. For maximum depth of field, I set to f9, giving a shutter speed of 1/320s. As I was shooting across the road with the view often blocked by the frequent lorries that were passing, the fast shutter speed would only help. I focus- / exposure-locked around a third of the way in to ensure front-to-back sharpness before recomposing and dropping the shot into the box.

In the digital darkroom

HDR

I never have the camera set to anything other than RAW, a pre-requisite for the sort of HDR treatment I intended for this shot. I went overboard and, using RAWShooter Essentials 2006 (now a part of PhotoShop LightRoom), made 12 separate exposures from the one shot. I did this, anxious to get as much texture in the clouds and razed crops as possible. I brought them together using Dynamic-Photo HDR before moving to PhotoShop.

PhotoShop

Again, fairly standard for my workflow, I applied a bit of TLR capture sharpening first, converted to mono using the black and white filter and judicial use of the channel mixer sliders. While adjusting the sliders, I kept an eye on the interplay between sky and ground but couldn't quite achieve a conversion that convinced me. I ended up treating the sky as a separate conversion on another layer.

A tweak on the curves to increase the contrast and a slight adjustment to the levels to deepen the shadows and lift the highlights a bit and that was it.

Any comments or questions, fire away :)

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Inner Peace

Bagged another couple of shots driving back to Plymouth from Staines on the A303. The weather went from overcast to sunny to fog-bound to sunny again, all in the space of a handful of miles.

I kept pulling over into lay-bys and side roads whenever an opportunity seemed to be developing.

These are the first two out of the digital darkroom and I've still got another couple to process, when I can get some time.

Hope these cut the mustard for you :)

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Haystack and Tracks

A sister shot to the Hay303 Stacks. I tried to get a point of view that showed the Haystack plumb in the centre of the tracks but it looked a little strange to me. This one was better, with the tracks seeming to lead to the side of the haystack.
Overall I'm pleased with the results, with the short stumps of hay in the mown field glistening in the bright sun and the haystack cresting the hill against a good sky.

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