Photographer
Medieval Morning.
Filter: Cokin Z pro ND2 grad. Processed in Lightroom 5.7.
Looking down the visitors walkway at the wonderful Bodiam castle. I took this a couple of weeks ago on a particularly cold and frosty morning. So cold in fact that frost started to form on my camera and filters!
Once called home.
Processed using Lightroom 5.7.
Texture and Light.
Processed in Lightroom 5.7
I met up with my friend Dan again for a brief explore around old abandoned building fairly local to us. The whole place has been both bricked and boarded up but we found one remaining access point that gave us easy entry. Lights were needed to move around the place on all of the floors except for at the very top, where the only light available was shining through the holes in the roof. The light outside was still pretty dull at this point so we decided to start shooting using our torches and my LED panel. However, as soon as it became bright enough outside, the feel of the building had completely changed. At this point we continued to shoot using only the ambient light. I think we both came away pretty pleased with our results.
Thanks for stopping by.
The Empty Cafe.
Hasselblad 500c, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f2.8, Ilford FP4.
Prelude to happiness.
Shot on Hasselblad 500c. Film; Ilford FP4. Developed by and scanned by my good friend Dan Smith.
Met up with my mate Dan to take the Hassleblad 500c out for a test drive yesterday morning. I have the camera on loan to get some use out of it as it hasn’t been used in quite some time. It was a bit hit and miss as I think that due to lack of use there are a couple of issues with at least one of the backs (did’t always wind the film on) and a number of shots didn’t come out. This could be down to poor metering on my part or maybe the shutter not firing correctly. I think that it’s just a case of putting more rolls of film through it to loosen up all the components. I still got a couple of shots I like, however,(this being one of them) and I’m quite fond how the light is shining across the front of the lens.
Tranquility. Looking out across a flooded field at Bodiam, East Sussex.
Cokin ND4 grey grad filter, processed in Lightroom 5.7.
I made a spur of the moment decision today to head out to nearby Bodiam. The sky was clear and there was a heavy frost covering everything, including my car, of which a good 10 minutes was taken up defrosting the windscreen. I arrived after a short but careful drive just in time for first light, I put on my hat, gloves and wellies, grabbed my camera gear and quickly set up to start photographing. The light was fairly even but to bring up the foreground grasses (trapped in ice and covered with frost) I decided to put on a ND4 (2 stop) graduated grey filter. ND Grads are an invaluable accessory for any landscape photographer and I really encourage you to invest in a filter system of some kind if you can.
I took a fair amount of similar shots to this, making slight adjustments in both composition and focal length (using my Sigma 10-20mm EX f4-5.6) but standing in the freezing cold meant that my fingers and toes started to go numb. This told me that I had been taking pictures in the same spot for far too long and it was high time I moved on to capture something else and my feet and fingers thanked me for it.
Other than my extremities getting a tad cold I had a really peaceful and pleasant time photographing. The only thing I encountered was that ice kept building up on the ND filter as well as on the top of my camera, so every few minutes I found myself having to wipe the filter with a lens cloth. Never leave home without one.
I’ll be posting more shots from today over the next few posts.
Thanks for reading.
Dave Wares 