Early morning walk Sunday 25th Oct

[Denis]

Three shots from this morning

Norman Chapel, Harlowbury, Essex. This small chapel consists of a Norman nave and chancel in one. It lies to the far east of Harlow New Town.

And a couple from along the River Stort

[KateW]

All beautiful and serene, but I love the sunlight in the first one.

[ChrisLumix]

I especially like that one with the canal boats on. 

[Korky]

Numbers 1 & 3 do it best for me - nice work, Denis.

Korky

[Clicker]

What a super set of images Denis ... A real advert for getting out as early as, or late as possible to catch that wonderful quality of light that permeates almost everything for those tantalisingly few hours. If you have any more like these consider one for the weekly competition .".anything backlit "   ... to be posted by midnight tomorrow . Just a thought

I love these Denis ... All very thoughtfully composed .. Lovely work ! 

[Denis]

Wow!

Thanks everyone, blame Bill for getting me up early after listening to his radio interview!

[Clicker]

Well he should know ...  One of the first things I was told when I started wielding a camera  was that almost every type of image is enhanced by very early morning or late evening light  and usually there are fewer people, cars  etc about to compromise some of the natural vistas we want to record. It has made an amazing difference to the aesthetic quality of your images of these scenes Denis ... Take a flippin' bow sir 

 

[colinb]

A wonderful set Denis, well worth getting out of bed for, thanks for sharing them with us.

[Guest]

The first one is the strongest, sound composition, good lead in and nice lighting / colour palette.

The glancing light in the second reflecting off the balconies and windows is strong but my eye drifts off down the canal and gets lost, perhaps a tighter crop?

Three is a lovely scene well composed, the only slight drawback is the pull of the bright sky. In my edit I have copied the image onto a new layer and reduced the exposure by 1.8 stops then masked it back for the narrowboat and across to the opposite bank. You could get the same effect in Lightroom with a radial filter. My edit here is far from perfect as it leave a grey and odd looking sky. Possibly bracketed exposures were what was really need at the time. One useful point is to use the cameras lowest base iso as this gives the greatest possibility of opening shadows if you have to under-expose to control the highlights. At iso 100 on the Canon 5DMk3 for example I can open up both shadows and blacks by 100% without inducing noise (not that I have to push the sliders that far very often! I'll stick up an image called "Nature's palette" where I had to do this because of the extreme contrast from where I was shooting.

#4 is probably the most challenging as it lacks foreground interest. A saying that stick in my head is "Find a really good view and put something better in front of it." You could carry a couple of blow up sheep n your camera bag!

That said it is a very pleasant scene and a well balanced exposure.

All in all though a lovely set.

 

[WereBo]

A beautiful set of pics indeed Bill, #4 does it for me, with the watery sun and mist-covered fields - It's waaay too long since I've seen scenery like that.....

I prefer the original post of the long-boat, the 2nd version has lost the vibrancy of the 1st.

[Denis]

Thanks very much Bill, I appreciate your input.

I was pleased myself with #1 as I had spied that as a potential photo last year.

#2  I thought about a crop but didnt want to lose the view down the river

#3 I shall have to experiment with the radial filter on lightroom but take on board what you say regarding ISO.

#4 I liked the sky..that was the sole purpose of the shot,  I knew it had not a lot going for it....blow up sheep eh?... try explaining that to a nosy copper

 

Thanks again Bill.