Pictures & musings from Cheshire
Winter, cold, icy conditions in the Bollin Valley, Prestbury, Cheshire. A study in shape, bokeh and texture with some abstract elements. These images from 2013 have grown on me over the years and I (now) like the degraded (grainy) and overly abstracted backgrounds in these.
I love the visual effect of snow or rather the effect that it has on lighting. These are a few more of my pictures from the very white winter of 2009 when we had persistent snow and ice well into the early part of 2010, it was a photographers dream. The picture above has been treated with a paper texture layer – I like the flattening effect of this but I also like how it conceals many of the digital artefacts arising from noise in the sky — colour noise in blues is always a problem in digital photography!
I have been applying ‘textures’ to my photos for quite a long time now and I think this may also be satisfying a desire to somehow give my images a more ‘organic’ feel, as if they are actually printed on traditional fibre papers. Black and white always makes me feel a nostalgic longing for the darkroom!
Main photo exif details: –
More pictures from the same the day.
The first real winter weather of 2015/16. The Winter thus far has been one of the warmest on record so it was quite nice to see (and feel) these more bracing conditions at last. I just managed to capture a few little aspects of the frosty condition, quite literally on my doorstep though I wish I could have gotten up into the now white hills of east Cheshire today.
The image above has been treated with one of my signature orton effect processes and I also like the way that the colour and shape are suggestive of a Jackson Pollock painting too.
Original photo exif details:-
Nikon D200, 50mm, 100iso, f2.8, 1/500sec, Jan 16th 2016 – 10:09
Below are two shots from St Peters Churchyard.
Nikon D80, 14mm, 100iso, f11, 1/100sec, Dec 18th 2010 – 12:06am
Another shot from the gloriously snow-bound winter of 2010. This time taken in the fields to north of Prestbury Village in Cheshire. This was a part of the locality that I have very rarely photographed but the snow and light here made the scene just perfect. Again, the image embodies some of my signature quirks – which are not always easy to define but I know they are there! The sky was a little granular in the RAW file which may be attributed to high ISO noise from my Nikon D80 sensor. I now have a tendency to rectify (over correct) this with a layered application of photoshop’s standard noise reduction tool and set to a low level of detail rendering. It’s an effect that I quite like in limited amounts, but of course, it does make the sky look very ‘digital’.
Nikon D80, 10mm, 400iso, f18, 1/160sec, Dec 18th 2011 – 11:54am
Looking back to the very snowy winter of 2010, down in the ‘low fields’ at Prestbury, Cheshire one cold and bright morning.
Very high quality hand made mounted and framed prints of this image are available to order on my Artflakes shop. Click the link below to see more.
Nikon D80, 10mm, 100iso, f9, 1/250sec, Dec 18th 2010 – 12:11pm
In anticipation of the approaching winter months – this shot is from 2010 when we had a very cold winter with prolonged snow fall and a glorious white Christmas. The image here has been HDR treated with a tentative orton process applied.
