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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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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