TREGISKY TO ST.STEPHENS

[Julian de'Courcy]

Managed to get out today. It clouded over fast from being a fine morning of blue skies and sun. I caught it as the cloud began to build, eventually bringing the rain later tin the day.
I sat here messing round, stitching three or four shots together and finally finished with a sepia type landscape. Enjoyed playing with the clouds. two images one is stitched with four photos and the second with three. Same scene.

Much larger versions on Flickr.





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TREGISKY by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr


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Tregisky by JuliandeCourcy, on Flickr

 

[Paul Lange]

I find these hold my attention for quite a while. Did you burn some areas and dodge others? The mix of dark and light areas speckled about makes things much more dramatic.

 

[Dave Moss]

Very dramatic Julian

 

[Beth Anthony]

amazing light. love how you've got the shadows to create a frame for your light.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Love the second, especially. the clouds centre stage, and the swirls in the soil - wonderful.

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

I find these hold my attention for quite a while. Did you burn some areas and dodge others? The mix of dark and light areas speckled about makes things much more dramatic.

Paul I did a bit of local burning for the clouds and also selected local areas for layer adjustment using selective colour mostly. From the Raw files which are stitched together, I crop which brings a large file saved in tiff. Back into Cs6 Adobe raw converter where I can use the graduation filter, often used from the top down and bottom up. This does if repeated grain the cloud and sky which I quite like It is more uneven than camera noise or software added noise and I think works ok.. Also I don't use any noise reduction at all in camera or software.
All the time I work in RGB with zero saturation. this means you can work on tones of each area of selected colour, using selective colour layers tool. I maybe wrong but I am guessing that the B+W specific software will work along a similar pathway but appear to make it more accessible (I just cannot afford the extra software). This also is worked on in local areas using the lasso with feathered edge. In local areas of the image I also work with most layers from gamma and exposure, levels,curves or whatever takes my fancy and works. So basically I stumble through and try to remember for next time what I did if it worked.

I do find what I do is very akin to how I used to paint with acrylics on canvas,( not very well) and although it seems a big jump from painting to photography , there are at times much that is very similar, more than what is not. Both are big pretenders, illusions and pretending to be something that it is not. Yet hopefully fun and not angst.

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Love the second, especially. the clouds centre stage, and the swirls in the soil - wonderful.

Yes the swirls are why I often photograph this scene. It is the remnants of last years maize harvest, the stumps that are left to be ploughed in.

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amazing light. love how you've got the shadows to create a frame for your light.

Thanks Beth

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Very dramatic Julian

Thanks Dave

 

[Pete Askew]

Super Julian. The wider 'canvas' certainly looks much more impressive enlarges so that you can see the detail. And the clouds do have a sculptural / painterly quality to them that I like very much. But it is the interplay between the land and sky that works so well I think.

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Super Julian. The wider 'canvas' certainly looks much more impressive enlarges so that you can see the detail. And the clouds do have a sculptural / painterly quality to them that I like very much. But it is the interplay between the land and sky that works so well I think.

Thanks Pete. I am becoming more aware of trying to get depth with photography through light in landscapes and a million miles from what I hoped for. But playing with the light on the foreground trees, keeping detail yet a variety of intensity is not easy and only partially achieved. I think that most photography Landscapes work well because of the light and impressions is often enough over detail on lots of occasions I have actually wondered if I aught to sell my canon gear and get a Nikon 800E and one good lens, or get the superb sigma dp merrill. But I suspect the Sigma would be very frustrating on some levels including their own and only raw converter.

 

[Lesley Jones]

I too really love these Julian, but more than that, I also love your statement "Yet hopefully fun and not angst"