Framedlight

After breakfast we went onto the pier to take long exposure pictures of the opposite pier and the town. I was rather taken with the movement of people up and down the pier which, when looking back towards the town, was facing directly into some warm sunshine which created a glow from the plank floor boarding of the pier. We were using 10 stop filters to get the exposure time up and for the people pictures I adjusted the ISO to get exposure times of 1/2 to 2 seconds in order to get some delineation of the figures but also some movement. The weather was clear but cold with some interesting clouds. I had brought fingerless gloves with me and wondered at my stupidity as I lost the feeling in the end of my fingers. I have converted most of these pictures into monochrome as well so I will post two sets - one colour and one black and white -  I can never decide which I prefer. The first picture is not a long exposure, but of the town of Whitby from the pier. The last picture is one I t...

Last week I went on a long exposure workshop run by Doug Chinnery, based in and around Whitby and the northeast. It was good fun and a chance to hone skills and spend some time immersed in photography. Doug had planned out a couple of really intensive days and prepared itineraries and tides to make the most of the locations. I will spread the two days over a number of blogs reflecting time of day and place. Here are the first pictures taken at Robin Hood Bay where we arrived before dawn for some early shots. We were blessed with some fine weather for this although the dawn was fairly gentle and atmospheric. The last picture was taken as we were leaving the beach to drive back to Whitby for a well deserved breakfast.

We had been planning to get to north Norfolk for a while but did not make it till this Saturday. An early start was planned as we wanted to get to Snettisham for dawn, so we left the house at 5.00am and got there for 7.00, with coffee and sandwiches to keep us going. It was not supposed to be a spectacular day for the geese flying in from the sea, although high tide was 7.15am which would tend to drive them into land. I think this was mainly as there was a full moon, which was out when we arrived but then disappeared behind a cloud never to be seen again. There were flocks of knot and lapwing out on the Wash and some skeins of geese eventually came over but not vast numbers. I got shots of the old breakwater and, with the 400mm Sigma, a cloud of knots. The place had been pretty damaged by the recent storm and only the first hide was opened. All the little shacky houses that you can see as you walk down have seemed to have survived. From Snettisham we progressed down to Titchwell, wh...

Feeling a little stale I had ordered an infrared filter which arrived while I was away in Wales. I thought it was not possible to take infrared photographs with modern DSLRs as they have a filter in them which takes out most of the infrared light. However I had seen some forum postings saying that you can achieve something, although you need super long exposure times. The filter I bought was sent from a company called Luxan in Germany - it is only a cheapish one as these can be very expensive and I wanted to see what I could get without shelling out a lot of money. It is 870nm (the end of the visible spectrum of light is around 700nm) which is pretty hefty and cuts out at least 10 stops of light. My first outing was to Audley End House. It was a very dull day, which was a mistake as I was getting exposure times of 6 minutes at f/13 and ISO 1600. When I looked at the pictures they all had a very bright spot on them. Consulting the internet I found that it was because I was using a Nik...

We were to leave our comfy cottage in Rhyd Ddu a day earlier as the forecast was so bad for the Friday we thought we may as well travel home during the rain. On the Thursday our friends and old neighbours from Nannerch joined us and little photography was done but more eating substituted. As we motored home we stopped in a little wood at the side of the road near Beddgelert to take a few snaps - and that was it. So only three pictures, and one of these is a black and white conversion.

As promised the photos from the previous blog have been digitally converted to monochrome using Silver Efex Pro 2. In most of them I have been pretty heavy with the grain. Which do you prefer? The last picture is the one pinhole photograph I took. My umbrella was blown inside out by the wind and a strut snapped while I was taking it!.

In came New Years Day 2014 with wind and rain. As the conditions were fairly depressing we thought of going with the ambience and visiting a ruined slate quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog. The quarry opened in 1810 and 50 years later mining for slate had also begun. The mine was known as the 'Slaughterhouse' as so many men were killed - between 1875 and 1886 there were 22 deaths out of a workforce of around 550. The fortunes of the mine were varied and it opened and closed several times as companies went into liquidation. It closed finally in 1970 although a little quarrying for slate took place in the 80's and 90's. It is approached up a path leading up from the edge of the town passing a small waterfall. The stream follows the path up to a lake and the outflow was used for turning machinery, The main buildings are a set of miners cottages now fallen into disrepair, although in late 2013 a move was made to save them. As there had been some work going on when we were there...