Landscape Details

Seen from the Roman road I have been walking along in Carmarthenshire, this view shows a small patch of the landscape in which it is set. Even though the tree in the foreground cuts across the view, I feel that it still does the job of somehow framing the scene, putting the scale and perspective in context.

The monochrome shot of the fence posts is more of a detail of the landscape. Apart from changing it to monochrome I had do some further work on the image. I liked the stance of the fence posts and the tangled texture of the barbed wire but there were one or two distracting objects in the background field that needed removing. One of them was positioned  behind the fence and proved a challenge to remove satisfactorily. Generally I make image adjustments in Lightroom but for more detailed work like that I would open the shot in Photoshop.

Complementary images to my walks this week can be found directly on Instagram or via the sidebar images on the StillWalks blog. Images displayed here and on Instagram are a mixture of iPhone and Canon DSLR photography.

Carmarthenshire

monochrome fence posts

Photoshopping – now you see it, now you don’t

I really liked the green block aspect of this building in Swansea’s SA1 quarter. But I did not like the lamp post in front of it!

When I took the photo this object was irritating, but I thought, “never mind, it’s part of the cityscape“. Looking at the image afterwards in Adobe Lightroom made me decide to spend the time taking the lamp post out. I knew it was going to take a little while to do it well, but I thought it was worth it.

What do you think?

Swansea SA1 building

Swansea SA1 building

White Balance in Phone Photography

Continuing with the idea of producing a StillWalks video entirely from photos and sound recorded on my iPhone, one of the difficulties with doing this is the lack of control you have of white balance with the phone camera.

It is possible to get some degree of balance of  light by trying different angles for a shot and avoiding, where possible, extreme differences of light. Other than that, you have to take pretty much what you get and do what you can in post processing. Zooming can help in some circumstances but I try not to use this much as it loses what crispness there is in a shot as the zoom is digital rather than optical.

You can buy all sorts of add-ons for phone cameras these days, such as zoom or macro lenses, tripods, etc., but my aim is to find out how, if at all practical it is to produce a StillWalks video with the basic iPhone and free apps.

Having said that, I am using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to make the adjustments necessary for video production. The images below are the same shot but with  different adjustments made but I am not going to go into the details of this now – I am keeping that for another day (or blog).

Suffice it to say that there is more work involved in the post processing of images taken on my phone than there is for those taken on my camera, so what I have saved in not having to lug heavy kit around with me, I have lost in the time needed afterwards in preparing the images for use. Hopefully this may be less the case with the sound recording!

Forest Walk, Fforest

Forest Walk, Fforest