Don't look back!
Loved the way the sun cast the shadows and with the bare trees gives a scary feel. Didn't have to wait long for someone to walk straight down the middle to...
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Loved the way the sun cast the shadows and with the bare trees gives a scary feel. Didn't have to wait long for someone to walk straight down the middle to give the perfect finish.
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Mar, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken along the river Plym running alongside the National Trust property Saltram HouseTime
It was taken mid day with the harsh light shining across the river into the trees and across the path. It was during the Autumn but what I think made this work, was the path and trees had been recently improved and cut back .Lighting
Natural sunlight during mid afternoon in the Autumn. The time of day and the harsh low light created long shadows while the path enclosed by the trees remained in dark shadow. This also produced big highlights on the side of the trees, also the trees finished at the end of the path leaving a bright circle at the end. All I needed to do was wait for a single person to walk the path and out the other end! It took a little while waiting around though.Equipment
Camera was a Nikon D3 with a 24mm to 70mm Nikor lens. It's now broken so had to replace the camera and now using Fuji XT-2, so much better!! I hate tripods so it was hand held nothing else. I did use a high ISO to get some detail but the noise level and processing adds to the effect I thinkInspiration
When I was walking along the river I didn't really notice much until I turned around and saw people walking out the end of the path. I tried a few shots of just the trees as they looked sort of spooky and tried to create a weird spooky image. It wasn't until I walked back in the reverse direction I noticed an almost bright circle at the end made by the trees, and the trees took on a strange arching position. So I set up the path for the leading lines, got the exposure to just get enough light in the shadows but retain the highlights in the trees. The I just had to wait for one person to walk the length of the path and have no one else in view. I wanted to try and create a shot of someone having to walk this scarry path and finally make it out the other end.Editing
I did on this one, although I can't really remember what I ended up using as I played around with so many different options to try and get the orange/HD look. It was one of those images that looked sort of flat without processing so started playing around. I used nik software to create it and fined tuned back in lightroom. I always start using lightroom as usually try to get right without other software. Hate photoshop, largely because I can't really use it and won't pay the price to use it!In my camera bag
Depends on where I go and how I challenge myself It varies, I will often go out with a body and a single lens which forces me to be creative but also understand the limitations and the benefits of a specific lens. You do see things differently when your stuck with one type of lens Since I change to Fuji with lighter body and lenses I will often go out with the XT-2 plus the 24-70mm and 70-200mm equivalent lenses. sometimes I'll take a strobe but not often.Feedback
Look carefully at locations and try to imagine what an end result will look like. Get a good perspective so the image is balanced and creates some leading lines, the path provides that but it wouldn't work unless the path was centrally placed in the image. Imagine yourself in the image and the emotions it would evoke, if it does nothing for you it probably will do nothing for others! I have little patience normally but you have to set the image up and then wait for something or someone to walk into it sometimes. Also timing, this just wouldn't work if the person at the end was in the middle of the path. Waiting allowed the size of the person to fit right in the middle and proportionally correct at the end of the path. As far as settings go, I generally expose for the area of the image I want to give the impact. In this case the highlights, then be creative with post production!
