Category Archives: Nature
Winter Sunlight
Early morning sunlight on a cold morning in Penllergaer Woods, Swansea. Images used in this week’s featured StillWalks video, “Woodland Walk – Winter”.
You can use the Donate button below to pay however much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Woodland Walk – Winter” which features Penllergaer Valley Woods near Swansea. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.
Identifying the Season
What identifies Winter for you? Answers in the comments please 😉
In Britain (SW Wales) we don’t expect to get winters like Canada or Norway or wherever. However, although I don’t expect snow, I do expect it to get a little bit cold from time to time through the season. This Winter has only brought wild winds, high tides and seemingly interminable rain!
No frost . . . No, I tell a lie, there has been a hint of frost on two occasions where I live, but that is it. If I am able to get any StillWalks production done this Winter, it will have to reflect the wet weather we are getting. But wet weather is the most difficult in which to do photography and field recording. Not impossible, just very uncomfortable and a problem for the safety of the kit.
This weeks featured StillWalks video is from another kind of Winter. Not snowy, but there is a little frost and ice which can be heard underfoot as well as seen.
You can use the Donate button below to pay however much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Woodland Walk – Winter” which features Penllergaer Valley Woods near Swansea. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.
Incredible Fungi in the Ghost Forest
The Ghost Forest is a permanent external exhibition at the National Botanic Garden of Wales which features huge tree stumps and their roots from the rain forest.
“The trees in the Ghost Forest, most of which fell naturally in storms and have their roots intact, are ‘ambassadors’ for rainforests worldwide,” said Ms Palmer. “The absence of their trunks is a metaphor for the absence of the planet’s lungs through deforestation.”
It is clear from the exhibits how majestic the trees were when standing in their natural environment. Their contribution to a natural, sustainable environment, alongside those others in the rain forest, must have been as substantial as the trees themselves.
Hopefully, the attention that this exhibition attracts to the issue of tree felling in the rain forests and other woodlands around the world, will grow and spread like the fungi that has now appeared on the stumps in the exhibition. They are amazing objects, both trees and fungi and of course, one would not exist without the other.
These are my final iPhone photos this week from the Botanic Gardens in Carmarthenshire. The first shot was taken using the iPhone Camera app and the fungi shots were taken with PureShot. very little pst production adjustment was made to any of these photos.
You can use the Donate button below to help StillWalks. Pay how much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Winter Lakeside Walk” which features Llyn Llech Owain Country Park in Carmartheshire. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.
Plants in the Glasshouse – Absorbed in iPhonography
I was absorbed in taking the photos and absorbed by the look of the plants but I made a mistake, one I make too often! I forgot to get all the information I would want about the things I was photographing – information I would want when writing this post.
I would like to be able to tell you what these fascinating and exotic plants are but all I can say is that they are in the Great Glasshouse in the National Botanic Garden of Wales. I can also tell you that the first photograph was taken in JPEG format (see yesterdays post for info on formats), and the second in TIFF.
Unfortunately that probably doesn’t give you information that you really want whether you are interested in photography or not, so I must apologise for the omission of this information and ask if anyone knows what they are, to post it in the comments. Thank you.
You can use the Donate button below to help StillWalks. Pay how much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Winter Lakeside Walk” which features Llyn Llech Owain Country Park in Carmartheshire. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.
Witch Hazel – Keeping Information (Lossless and Lossy formats in iPhone Photography)
That new app I have on my iPhone (PureShot) allows HI_Quality and MAX_Quality jpeg photos and also TIFF lossless photos. The TIFF format in this case is not only lossless but is dRAW which means there is no in-app post processing done and no compression applied.
For those of you unaware of the ins and out, ups and downs of formats in photography, suffice it to say that the JPEG format takes away information gathered by the camera to a greater or lesser extent, thus the photographic information is compressed. TIFF is a lossless format which, although giving bigger file sizes, means there is no loss of information and, therefore, greater control for the photographer over how the finished image looks as well as (theoretically) a higher quality of image (at least in terms of the number of pixels used).
The image of the Witch Hazel below was taken in TIFF dRAW format and the close up of another Witch Hazel in the Botanic Garden of Wales was taken in JPEG format. Obviously you cannot make a straight comparison between the two formats here because the images are different but one thing I would say about the PureShot app and the Apple Camera app is that whilst it may be true that PureShot allows more control at the shooting stage (and I was very pleased with the results I got with PureShot), the Camera app is also very good.
There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when taking photographs but as far as the kit and applications are concerned, having a decent lens is probably the single thing that makes the biggest difference. Apple (and I am sure other high end smart phones with which I have no experience) made the right decision when they installed a decent lens in the iPhone.
You can use the Donate button below to help StillWalks. Pay how much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Winter Lakeside Walk” which features Llyn Llech Owain Country Park in Carmartheshire. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.