I was struck by the layers, textures and different shades of brown and green of the overwintered plants across the lake on my way to work.  So, I took a picture which I quite like.

It was taken using my compact, ISO80, 1/50secs at f/3.2.

I like the repeating patterns and effect of having a wide aperture (f/2.0).  This is another shot that I took on the industrial estate – as much as anything I thought I should have a walk in the snow and see if I could find something different to take.  This almost fit the bill – I hadn’t taken it in snow before.

I like the triangle of light sky at the top reflecting the snow at the bottom.  Other than that I don’t really have a lot to say about the photo – I guess it is just a matter of taste.

Settings were ISO200, 1/4000secs at f/2.0 using the aforementioned 50mm lens.

This is one of those shots that has potential, but has not quite got to the ten out of ten level.  I have been trying to get a decent picture of the frost on the bullrushes, but none of the million or so that I took came out quite as I had hoped.

This was slightly different to the others in that I wanted the bullrushes as part of the picture, not the only subject.  I wanted to get some of the sunlight in the background, with the layers of plants at the edge of the pond just ahead, with the branches forming another layer and the rushes at the front.  Ideally the rushes at the front should have been sharp with a little less sharpness further back to allow these to stand out a little more.

I have cropped the image and sharpened it slightly, but the main confession I have to make is to some cloning.  Yes, I am ‘fessing up, someone had kindly lobbed a beer bottle into the middle of the ice and it showed up nicely in front of the fallen branches and ruined the picture – thank you pointless idiot for your littering!

I like the foreground, I like the branches, I am not as keen on the crop (if I had left it higher at the top then there was a rather unattractive bit of warehouse in the way), the bullrushes could have been a bit sharper and not cross over the ‘horizon’ of the far bank.  The latter would be difficult to change without ladders as I am not very tall!

All in all, it may not sound like it, but I am pretty pleased with the resulting picture.

50mm lens was in use again (it is getting a bit like my macro lens!) allowing a lovely ISO100, f/6.3 and 1/100 secs.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my compact has a low light setting, so I thought I would try it on the industrial estate on the way home.  However, it had some trouble with autofocus and couldn’t seem to catch hold of the building so I took the shot out of focus.  This is how the world looks to me if I take my glasses off, so I guess it is relevant.

Compositionally I am not sure if there is too much straight black at the bottom, but this does mean that the light is contained in the central third and the photo is relatively symmetrical which I think works for a shot all about reflections.

The settings on the camera were ISO3200, 6mm and 1/30secs at f/2.0.

Never fear – I have a camera with a small, light lens and a large rucksack in which it can reside.  In other words, I grabbed my D-SLR and took it to work.  I was afraid that my compact just wouldn’t do justice to the scenery.

So, at the risk of being late for work and with hands that felt as though they were going to fall off from frostbite I took pictures of the scenes which I see every day.  This is the small lake on the industrial estate which has been frozen for a few days now.  Although I took some photos mainly as record shots to compare the scenery over the months, I was particularly pleased with this when I saw it in Lightroom.

I like the the pattern of the snow on the water and the way it sweeps round to the right.  I also like the frosting on the trees and the detail in the reeds in the foreground.

The 400D was fitted with my 50mm lens, settings were ISO200, f/4.5 and 1/50 secs.  It was a bit of a surprise that the picture was not more blurred at these settings and with the shivering that was going on!

Again, it was the lines, this time diagonal that I was looking at in the picture.  I also like the repetition that comes from the reflection and the shadows.

As with the others, it was taken with my 17-85mm kit lens on shutter priority and set at 1/100secs and ISO200, this time at f/22 for a focal length of 33mm.

Taken on shutter priority, 1/100secs, ISO200, 85mm, f/10 using my kit lens.

Firstly, it was so clean and shiny, but also, all the lines of the building were clean too and almost outlined in blue.  Then, when you add in the verticals of the fence it almost seems as though it was made to be in a book about lines.  Everywhere in the photograph there are straight lines and rectangles.  The photo was made better by the blue sky I think which mirrors the blue in the subject,  and I decided to change the proportions to cut out the road and some of the grass along with an inconvenient shadow of a lampost.

This was again taken with my kit lens on shutter priority, ISO200, 1/100 secs, f/22 and 17mm.

The light is not great when you have a limited compact, but I didn’t have a tripod either, so my D-SLR would not have helped anyway.

The thing that caught my eye was the reflection of the clouds in the water and their apricot colour.  It added a warmth to the scene that tried to balance the cold of the snow and ice.  I thought about adding a little fill light in Lightroom in order to give a bit more definition to the foreground and remove some of the black, but, I like the contrasts and the darkness of the light.  (Can you have darkness of light?  Probably not, but you know what I mean.)  It is not a photo that would win any prizes, but I like it, it gives me a sense of the place.  There was a certain stillness that comes after the working day on most industrial estates, once the hustle and bustle of people driving home has gone, which was enhanced by the dulling effect of the snow.

As mentioned, it was taken using my Canon Ixus, set at ISO200 (there is absolutely no point going above as the pictures are of pants quality), and it chose f/2.8, the light on the water and the snow combining to allow 1/400 secs shutter speed.

Early Morning Daventry Heartlands

Early Morning Daventry Heartlands

I took these two pictures at about the same time on successive days.  Unfortunately, at this time of year the light is not great and so the pictures that I take on my Ixus can be a bit grainy.

The reason I decided to publish them on my blog though was that I thought that they illustrated how a familiar place can look quite different even at the same time of year.  The viewpoint is almost the same, but I think the feel of the two pictures couldn’t be much more different.

This is an area that I pass most mornings, and, I guess most people just pass industrial estates by without much of a second glance.  However, I like to look for the photo opportunities in the things that I see every day and which most people wouldn’t look at.  In some places the pictures are there waiting to be taken, finding something in the mundane I think takes a different sort of skill.

I also think that modern industrial estates can be quite nicely designed, especially when compared to those built a few decades ago where all trees were banned and nobody had ever heard of landscaping!  Walking through the estate I often see a variety of birds, rabbits and even muntjac as well as a variety of flora, all providing various types of photo opportunities.

In order to stand any chance of taking a picture before 8am in December I had to bump the ISO up to 400 (which adds even more grain), the settings for these were 5.8mm, f/2.8, 1/500 secs for the top picture (mmm… maybe ISO200 would have been a possibility – it hadn’t been a few minutes earlier) and 5.3mm, f/2.8, 1/50 secs for the bottom picture (I think this also illustrates the difference in the light levels).