Lake District, UK

[Lightstream]

Had a rare opportunity to do what I really enjoy - landscape shooting - so I packed my bags and headed off to Lake District when I had the chance.

Up until the trip, I'd been very bored, the only interesting thing to do was think about "which lens do I want next". This is not productive, nor is it healthy for the wallet, which is overstressed as it is :lol:

So I put the lens list on hold, grabbed my 3 travel zooms (10-22, 17-85 IS, 70-300 IS), 350D and got on the plane. Nixed the 20D because I wanted to travel a little lighter and the 350D is substantially lighter.

Came back with these:

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/abt.sized.jpg

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/adt.sized.jpg


http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/abe.sized.jpg

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/aef.sized.jpg

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/abm.sized.jpg

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/aay.sized.jpg


I even had an opportunity to catch....

A sheep:
http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/aaq.sized.jpg

A cow (sticking its tongue out at me):
http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/aba.sized.jpg

And.... A DUCK!!
http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/agn.sized.jpg

Where I am, it's so desolate, that even the duck is postprocessed: roasted or boiled...



And as I was looking through the images I'd brought back, a new insight occured to me - I was delivered from the temptation to pixel-peep each and every one of the images (because I was so happy with the results and the opportunity to shoot) and I was delivered from my lust of new gear with the realization shoot more, worry less, and enjoy the adventure.

[Buggbairn]

some nice shots there :)

I'm glad you had a great day out :)

My only nit-pick would be that your water shots......you seem to have struggled with the bright sky and under-exposed the backgrounds a little, thats the thing I struggle with shooting into or near to a bright sun, high in the sky.

ND grad filters may help you in such situations :)

[weemannie]

Some good shots of a lovely part of the country (for England anyway :lol: )
Glad you enjoyed yourself.:)

[lakiluno]

where do you live...got on a plane to the lake district? (and next time visit the trossachs and Loch Lomond national park - just as lakey, but higher mountains :D

(joke)

Nice pics. Some of those show a really nice area. I hope you enjoyed yourself.

Leo

[rudgej]

Nice series Lightstream, with my favourites being the second one and the town one (where is it?). While your copyright is not too obtrusive, I feel it does slightly detract on the second one where it covers the initial detail of the fence near the gate.

[Lightstream]

Thanks all :) really enjoyed my visit, and the photography.

Yup.. I also think the tag blocks part of the nice shale wall in the first picture. The town is Keswick.

I do agree about the dynamic range problem - in some of the darker blue shots I was using a circular polarizer to try and control some of it.

Later in the trip I figured out a solution to deal with it, without the need for a ND grad. Expose for the sky (just as I did in the earlier shots), because for digital, it is easier to recover shadows than highlights. My mistake was that the earlier shots were not taken in RAW (I use JPEG because I was very concerned about running out of storage). I later switched to RAW for this image. I put together two quick crops to illustrate the difference:

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/misc350d/add.jpg

Exposing for the house completely blew out the sky (solid white), exposing for the sky makes the house very dark, but Rawshooter Essentials' "Fill Light" tool is excellent in bringing the house back.

Still learning.. will definitely employ this trick next time and make sure I have enough storage for RAW data.


However, not all is lost - I tried using PS Elements 3.0's highlight/shadow recovery. Adding 25% to the shadows makes things look much better:

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/uk/ago.jpg

Thanks for the feedback.. it is appreciated, I'm much happier with the lake image now. :)

[dewmuw]

Nice shots - you must have been scooting around a bit by the looks of things!