In a land of freshwater lakes and rivers as numerous as Canada it can be forgiven that not all of our waterways get the notoriety they deserve though it does give one treasure to hunt for. Not every waterfall needs to be captured as smooth milk and if one does use a slow shutter speed you should also take a picture of the surroundings at a much faster shutter speed to blend into the image to reduce the softness from movement of small things.

East of the town of Rosseau on Highway 141 about ten minutes is the Upper Rosseau Falls located right beside the road where a bridge crosses the Rosseau River and a small picnic area is located. The river travels after hitting one last falls called Lower Rosseau Falls about 1000m downstream from this location and empties into Lake Rosseau. This shot captures the North side of the bridge crossing where a small cascade lives before the 30m drop on the southside of the falls sometimes bigger is not better just different.

I took this on Sept 26, 2021 with my D850 and Tamron 24-70 f2.8 G2 Lens at 24mm, 1/13s, f16 ISO 64 processed in LR, PS +Topaz ,and DXO

Disclaimer: My style is a study of romantic realism as well as a work in progress

shot by KHWD

want to see more images or read the blog?

www.motorhome-travels.net/post/blog-46-keswick-cumbria-gl...

Capturing ripples and reflections with a camera can create stunning and dynamic images. Here are some tips to help you get the best shots:

Finding the Right Water

Still Water: For clear reflections, look for still water like ponds or lakes. Early mornings are often best as the wind is usually calm1.

Ripples: If you want to capture ripples, a gentle breeze can create interesting patterns without completely disrupting the reflection.

Equipment and Settings

Tripod: A sturdy tripod is essential to keep your camera steady, especially if you’re using slower shutter speeds.

Lens: A wide-angle lens (15mm to 30mm on a full-frame camera) is often ideal for capturing expansive scenes.

Shutter Speed: For ripples, use a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion. For smooth reflections, a slower shutter speed can create a serene effect.

Composition Tips

Symmetry: Reflections often create natural symmetry. Position the horizon line in the center of the frame to emphasize this.

Foreground Interest: Include elements in the foreground to add depth and interest to your composition.

Post-Processing

Enhance Reflections: Use editing software to enhance the clarity and color of reflections. Adjusting contrast and sharpness can make a big difference.

Remove Distractions: Clean up any unwanted elements that might distract from the main focus of your image.

Would you like to see some examples or need more specific advice on any of these points?

Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM Lens. Pentax K3m11.

Work in progress with the big lens, this was taken in good conditions, perfect light and a nicely posing bird not too far away. The fast shutter speed has worked well here although in hindsight I think f8.0 would have been the better choice.

sitting on the deck playing with my Sigma lens and shutter priority... the fan was going fast... amazing how it can stop time!!!

A Great Egret and Little Egret make a harmonious landing into the water.

I am beginning to love, love love my Nikon D500. This camera has rave reviews so my expectations were high when I finally got it into my hot little lands. My first week with it was a disaster. All my images were soft and blurry. Of course my initial reaction was that I had a bad copy of the camera. While it happens, it is rarely the case. It usually comes down to technique. I had never used my "Big lens" (Tamron 150-600) on a crop sensor. It performs differently compared with my Full Frame and after some research, I realised that I did not have the shutter speed anywhere near fast enough to compensate for the greater focal distance I was getting with the crop sensor, particularly as I have been hand holding alot and trying birds in flight shots. I was also shooting under terrible conditions. Some changes to my technique and settings, now fully manual and auto ISO, I am starting to get alot more keepers.

I need alot more practice to work out which of the awesome AF settings work best for different scenarios but it is lots of fun trying.

“They’ve got one bag left at Portreath. Four pounds ninety-nine. Better be quick if you want it?” Ali had been on the Too Good to Go app again. “It’s a pound less at their Lanner shop though,” she added after a few more moments. I looked outside the window at a funereal shroud with a distinct threat of rain in the air and branches swaying aimlessly on a grumbling wind. The featureless white sky showed no signs of allowing even the tiniest shard of sunlight to pierce its way through and bring a brief warming caress to this gloomy December afternoon. “What’s the collection window?” I replied. “Two until three thirty this afternoon,” came the answer. If anything, Lanner is very slightly closer to home, and this was a day for staying indoors and letting the world outside slip by. But then again, you can’t turn down a bargain bag when there’s room in the freezer. I tapped into the app and reserved the last bag from the bakery at Portreath.

So I was going to Portreath. Because even when there isn’t a glimmer, there’s still a glimmer, and on days like this, Portreath has a habit of coming up with the goods. And with the goodies for that matter. Today’s surprise bag contained an egg mayo sandwich on white, a ham and tomato sandwich on granary, two croissants, and four, count them, four pasties. Three of them a middling sort of size, and one monster. The bags that contained them were labelled too. I’m still trying to decide what S&S is (it’s currently stored in the freezer). I hope at least one S stands for steak. If the other means sausages then that’s going to be one helluva pasty. All of this for four pounds and ninety-pence. Who says you can’t still snap up a bargain now and again these days? Usually you pay more than that for one pasty now. And with business done, I went back to the car, where I deposited the swag, reported home to Ali on the contents, which by now was minus one egg mayonnaise sandwich on white, and then pulled the camera bag from the boot. You didn’t think I’d gone to Portreath without the camera did you? Even as I walked along the road leading to the inner harbour I could see thunderous white tops rising above the sea wall beyond.

When the tide is high and the ocean roars, standard procedure is to walk along the north quay of the inner harbour, past the hauled up fishing boats and up the staircase to Dead Man’s Hut for the classic view of the Monkey Hut along the breakwater. From here you then take one shot after another of big waves smashing over the end of the breakwater and rising in clouds of spray over the lonely white hut. It’s enormous fun, and any photographer with a pulse who happened to be in the area would be crazy not to do it. Almost every folder I have from years of taking photos here has at least a few of those. Portreath equals storm and a storm means “go to Portreath” is pretty much how my brain works. If there’s a storm, you’ll usually find a cluster of togs competing for space at the top of those steps. But today I didn’t even think about going that way. Today I was set on the beach, and the long lens was the only option. No filters, no frills, and not even a tripod. Just a fast shutter and a lot of whirring.

The beach was busy enough this Saturday afternoon, with people making the most of what daylight there is at this time of year. Dogs and children charged about the place excitedly, burning off their excess energy as owners and parents tried their best to keep pace with them. The waves weren’t the biggest I’ve seen here, not by a distance in fact. But even still, this was quite exhilarating. And the gloomy afternoon simply turned the sky into a gigantic softbox, all but removing every last colour from the world. And with the camera set to burst mode, I sprayed and prayed, while the ocean just sprayed. I stayed for over an hour, taking repeated shots of four different compositions, watching the waves as they smashed into Gull Rock and the Monkey Hut, the latter from a different angle than the usual. Coming to Portreath had been the right decision. There’s no beach at Lanner - it’s five miles inland you see. Well worth paying an extra pound for my pasties this afternoon.

Happy New Year to you all. Many thanks for all your wonderful support in 2025!

I’m standing lochside setting up for an evening of shooting the dark skies and the Milky-Way when I catch sight of a little patch of light appearing in the distant valley. The light caught me by surprise because the whole evening had been a bit of a washout with heavy clouds and threats of rain. In fact I would have already packed up and headed home already but it was a long trip to site and I wasn’t leaving till I had exhausted every opportunity. So it came as a delightful surprise to see a touch of colour appear over the water. The sun had just managed to find a little gap under the clouds and was shining through into the valley creating a really nice progression of light and shade among the slopes and ridges. But the problem is it was changing fast and wasn’t going to last long.

Now when you shoot dark skies the usual lens is something wide both in aperture and focal length. I was set up with a 17mm f2.8 which was utterly useless for catching the little patch of light. It would end up no more than a spot in frame at that distance. So picture the mad rush to dive into the camera bag and bring out the big guns. In my case that was the 120-300 f2.8. So a major bit of juggling ensued; unmount the wide lens, switch over lens caps, invert the lens hood, attach the support bracket, adjust the quick plate, align the tripod head, fix the plate to the head, mount the zoom, attach the big hood and swing into position for the shot. Phew! As I glance through the viewfinder and press the shutter I watch the last of the light disappear as shadow floods the valley to replace the sunshine.

So at least I got a shot. Not as good as it could have been but making the best of a bad situation seems to be my mantra these days. Being prepared is what I should be going for and being ready to catch that opportunity when it presents is probably the best lesson I can impart from the experience. Happy shooting!

If we thought we were going to be alone up here, we very quickly realised we were wrong. Huddled at the summit beside the trig point sat a trio of sunrise seekers, huddled in colourful matching blankets and looking a little like the Andean pipers from The Fast Show all those years ago. It seemed as if they might be frozen solid and I wondered how long they’d been sitting here. It was ten to five, and sunrise was just about fifteen minutes away. If they’d come up here to watch a soft yellow orb dissolve the clouds away in the first hours of daylight, they were going to be disappointed. Maybe we should have checked to see whether they were still alive, as our arrival didn’t seem to have registered with them at all, sitting there as still as the grave. We weren’t exactly overjoyed either if I’m honest. No fog or cloud inversions to speak of, despite the forecast, and no gaps in the sky for the sun to filter through and warm the highlights or throw contrast over the land. Still, we were here and black and white had been the odds on favourite in any case. No heather, no autumn golds, just green and more green in front of the grey sky. Not for the first time we discussed whether we should have come here much later in the year.

For the second time in three mornings, we had crawled out of bed before dawn and trundled through the empty streets of Buxton towards the edge of the fells. This was our second outing to Mam Tor - we came here less than an hour after checking in at our rented cottage on Friday night for the first adventure among the Peaks. So at least we knew where we were going as we arrived at the National Trust car park, a few vehicles already dotting the spaces around us. A brief spell of oxygen deficit disorder later and we were up on top, gazing doubtfully at the scene. To be honest, we could just as easily have come here five hours later and come away with pretty much the same shots as the ones we were about to take. It was Monday, the start of the working week for normal people, and while it would no doubt be ticking over later on, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as overwhelming as the Three Shires Head trip the previous evening.

We headed down the opposite slope across a long gently shelving ridge, gradually making our way to the famous gate that’s been photographed so many times before. I already had a pretty good idea of what I was going to try and began to set up just after we’d passed through it, not bothering with the option to include it in my own composition. Meanwhile, as he so often does, Lee ignored the big money shot and headed on along the path, crossing the ridge and disappearing rapidly over the next summit in the direction of Back Tor and its lone tree. He’s like a little gazelle when he’s on a mission. A few minutes later Dave followed, and I saw neither of them for the next hour or two.

Just a few passers by came and went. A young South African lady with a small dog stopped for a brief chat, and a couple of hikers nodded silently as they walked into my frame. Well I could hardly tell them to wait while I decided the moment was right, could I? For the most part, I stood here alone, with no real change in the conditions to stir the shutter. After a while I walked to the next summit to see if the others were still in view, and then I returned to my spot. Now and then I swapped cameras to bring in the long lens and draw the triumvirate of midground hilltops closer, but that was about as racy as it got. Those familiar leading lines from the famous viewpoint weren't going to deliver a classic image this morning, but once you’ve actually managed to get out of bed early (which isn’t very often at all in my case), you begin to enjoy the fact that there’s hardly anyone else around yet. Down in the valley on the Old Mam Tor Road that leads out of Castleton, I could see a string of motorhomes full of slumbering occupants; perhaps minus the three hardy blanket wearers, who for all I knew had turned into ice statues far up on the summit of Mam Tor behind me.

Not long after seven, my companions reappeared on top of the ridge in the distance, and after a few final shots we headed back down to the car park. My step counter was already past nine thousand for the day. We drove back toward Buxton, joining the morning commuter traffic, passing through the village of Dove Holes where kids waited for the bus in their school uniforms. For us it was time to go and lie low for a few hours - to get some sleep before a much more strenuous outing later in the day.

The celebrated sunrise spot hadn’t surrendered all that it might have done, but if you don’t go, you’ll get precisely nothing at all. And when the occasion calls for it, a good old fashioned black and white conversion can often cover up one's incompetence with colours. Especially at five in the morning when you’re still rubbing the sleep from your eyes and fantasising wildly about coffee. And as you roll back into bed after a bowl of porridge, you can’t help feeling virtuous - all the more so when you’ve stood on top of a fell before sunrise. I really should try to do this more often. I might get to like it in time.

From the same morning - Peak Preparation Pains:

www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/53767387499/in/datepo...

I couldn’t move on to the next season without returning to at least one more photograph from last month’s stormy shenanigans at Portreath. So far together we’ve visited the view from the Pepperpot and the “will he or won’t he” moment as the bodyboarder takes a long enigmatic pause on the beach, but it would be remiss of me not to include a moment from the classic viewpoint in among the scrum of spectators at the Dead Man’s Hut. “Winter’s last hurrah,” if you will. You can guarantee the moment there’s a storm in the air that the tight space here will be packed with humanity right to the edge of the steep and narrow steps. I’m amazed the local council hasn't started a ticketing system for togs - you know the kind of thing. Arrive with a brand new mirrorless set up, and you’ll be charged a fiver, but if you’ve got an old DSLR it’s half price. If you’ve got a brand new iPhone that’ll be ten pounds please. Can you imagine the uproar?

Storm Kathleen didn’t rank amongst the biggest monster storms we’ve witnessed here - not by a long way she didn’t. But even on quieter days where the sea is in a busy kind of mood, it can be a lot of fun here at high tide. And today was delivering conditions that were close to ideal for taking shots. Lots of action at the Monkey Hut, but barely any spray plaguing front elements, and no rain either - at least no rain for well over an hour during our visit. It was only later on, down by the beach that we were sent scuttling for the car by a heavy curtain of freezing water from the sky. But for now it was dry, and at the top of the steps I waited patiently, hoping someone would get bored, leave in search of the cafe, and present me with a front row space.

Soon I had my moment. The long lens was already on the camera, and I’d dialled in my settings before leaving home. Burst mode, auto ISO and a nice fast shutter time - a recipe for headaches later as we sift through our images, trying to pick the few that will make it into the shortlist for the editing suite. Looking around me, the council could have cleaned up today. A number of full price entry fees would have been due, although I’d have only been coughing up two pounds fifty in small change, just to annoy them.

I wasn’t here very long in fact. I was trying to be economical, especially as I’d already taken over four hundred shots from the top, which had been my main objective that day. But I couldn’t resist having a look from this most well known vantage point, and then the camera couldn’t help sneaking its way out of the bag and into my mitts. And it’s frightening how quickly the card can start buffering when the excitement kicks in. In just eleven minutes, I added nearly a hundred and fifty exposures to the confusion. A hundred and fifty moments of crash bang wallop over the top of the poor maligned monkey hut - which has only been here for ten years after the original was washed away in a far bigger storm - a few months before I took up landscape photography as a hobby. It’s obviously made of stern stuff.

This stoical bastion at the end of the long breakwater was originally constructed for the harbour pilots to shelter in while they sent signals to ships, saying “Don’t bother trying to come in at the moment. Bleddy epic it is. ‘ad fourteen cold baths already. You’ll be smashed to pieces against the cliffs. ‘Seen that lot clicking away on their box brownies up there? Dunno why they ‘ave them expensive cameras - I could do better on my bit of chalkboard. Parish clerk ought to charge them ‘alf a sixpence each to be up there at all. That’ll pay for a new monkey hut when this one gets washed away in a hundred years from now. A big wave’s going to come in and wash the bleddy lot of them away to sea in a minute……”

Well they probably didn’t say all that, but can you imagine getting the gig and being told it’s your turn to dodge the incoming crash bang wallop of water and race along the slippery jetty in your hobnail boots to flash your storm lantern at approaching ships? No, me neither. It’s tasty enough from this viewpoint at times.

sitting on the deck playing with my Sigma lens and shutter priority... the fan was going fast... amazing how it can stop time!!!

End of the day... shot straight into the light at wide ish aperture, having a senior moment and forgot the ISO was high (400), hence fast shutter.

Here's a Vertorama of last Sunday's sunset... captured on the rocks at Melkbos Strand.

I didn't have my tripod with me... so I was shooting everything hand-held. I decided to open up the aperture more than I would normally do... to ensure a fast shutter speed... to prevent camera-shake and to freeze the splashes of the waves crashing against the rocks. This was probably the best splash of the afternoon... it wasn't very big... but that little bit of water in the lower left-hand corner that seems to be defying gravity... that really makes this shot for me!

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm, aperture of f8, with a 1/250th second exposure.

Click here to check out my Vertorama tutorial.

This is the fountain that is in the middle of the pond behind our house. And, this is the blue heron that fishes in said pond on occasion. I'd been stalking him with my camera and my longest lens, which still isn't long enough to get a good, sharp snap of him. He inadvertently stepped backwards off the fountain and this is him trying to regain his footing. It's a big crop to get this close so the clarity is not the best. Oh, to have a 500mm....

Any suggestions on my camera settings to get a better photo in this situation are welcome. I opened up the aperture and bumped the ISO so I could get a faster shutter speed. This is handheld as I had no time to set up a tripod.

We hadn’t really bargained for a bulging car park here on Christmas Eve. Why wasn’t everyone else charging about in a frenzy, picking up an extra jar of cranberry sauce and having punch ups in the supermarket aisles over the last tray of pigs in blankets? Why weren’t they worrying about whether there were enough crackers or sprouts for the dinner table the next day? I ignored the queue and snuck off to the right into the top car park, which at first seemed to be a bad move until an elderly couple came strolling towards me with intent. “Are you about to leave?” I asked through a wound down window. “Yes, we’re just here,” the man pointed to a parked car five yards behind me. Fortune favours the inventive. Five minutes later, as I walked down through the melee, apologetic volunteers told waiting drivers that the place was full. “We’ll get you in as soon as possible,” I heard a lady say to a bored looking man who was stuck in a growing tailback that threatened to block the road down to the King Harry Ferry. At least I was in, although it was very busy indeed. At her suggestion I’d come here to meet my daughter and two year old granddaughter for a spot of lunch and a slow amble around our local National Trust garden. At least once inside the grounds, things seemed a bit more relaxed. None of us cope well with Christmas. It all goes a bit too crazy as far as we’re concerned. People spending money they can’t afford on things that other people neither need nor want. “Did you keep the receipt?” Ali and I find it all a lot less stressful now that we no longer buy each other presents. One of my cousins is in the Witnesses, and while I don’t share her religious convictions, our views on the festive season don’t seem to be that far apart. Call me Mr Grinch if you like. If you enjoy this time of year, that’s great - all I ask is to be allowed to sit on the sidelines with a note from Matron.

After lunch, when a very small person needed to go home before the danger nap hour arrived, I was determined to grab a bit of time to myself before surrendering to the madness. And this was a place where I’d once come to directly from work, immediately after the end of my last ever autumn term, on an afternoon where I’d seen a couple of possibilities that nobody else appeared to have spotted before. On that drab December day I took shots that promised more than they delivered, and resolved to return with a longer lens and in better conditions. Now, four years and one day later, I was back again. The clock had not long struck two in the afternoon, sunset was a little after four, and Ali had given me a shopping list for Tesco in Truro before six. Which included pigs in blankets. But they had to be nice ones because we were dining with her family the next day. Twelve people in one space with all of those awful Christmas songs bouncing off the walls and rattling between my ears. I refer you to the last few sentences of the first paragraph.

I digress - back to those two compositions I’d seen but never returned to in all this time. The first of them was proving to be rather frustrating. Try as I did, it needed a fast shutter and wasn’t working, so with daylight starting to run out, I moved from the beach and up the slope to the other, where the matching headlands on the east side of the Fal Estuary lay bathed in softly glowing winter light. Last time I tried, it was a tight one to compose with some distractions coming in from the right, but now I had the extra options that the big lens offered, and I was sure this was going to be the time to finally get the shot I’d had in my mind’s eye for so long. With up to four hundred millimetres at my disposal, isolating the twin headlands seemed straightforward enough.

So imagine my surprise when it quickly dawned on me that the distraction wasn’t a distraction at all. That instead of the minimal appeal of a long exposure on the two promontories alone, one with the foreground section on the right might add an element of balance that I hadn’t really considered before. A faster exposure allowed the scene to come alive with the inclusion of the gulls. Of course I tried each option, with exposures both short and long. I liked this one the most. When I think back to this Yuletide season, I won’t linger on parlour games and that tiresome Slade song that I’ve now had to endure for fifty-two (count them!) consecutive Christmases. Instead, this is where you’ll find me - standing alone in a peaceful place, and only faintly worrying about whether the local Tesco will have run out of pigs in blankets or if there are enough sprouts in the fridge for us to make it through to the new year without starving.

Yesterday's visit by Storm Arwen found one photographer in Cornwall doing two things he wouldn't usually dream of. Firstly, he set out without his tripod, intentionally at that, and secondly he was in the car by noon, hours before sunset even at this time of year. It was the beginning of a strange and exhilarating couple of hours in the company of the storm.

I almost always head for Portreath when the weather gets exciting, partly because it's so close to home, but also because it offers a couple of handily placed objects that always grab the attention here. If you look at the other shots in this album you'll see plenty of images of the famous Monkey Hut, rebuilt for no apparent reason other than as a seascape photography subject after the winter storms of 2014. It's less often that I train the lens on the megalith of Gull Rock, planted by giants in the middle of the sea a few hundred yards from the shoreline here. Wondering how big it is? Zoom into the top right hand corner and that herring gull will give you a better idea.

As you drive towards the coast on a day like this, you gradually sense the ramping up of the elements; trees sway ever more wildly as you approach your destination. You open and close the car doors with two hands, praying the wind doesn't rip them from you as you watch them smash into the side of the vehicle you park next to. From the main drag of the village you catch glimpses of the angry sea, with occasional columns of spray drifting towards you along the harbour front.

Yesterday I'd decided on an hour at most. I'd then go home and drink coffee as I pored over the results. I'd attached the 70-200, and at the very last moment popped the 100-400 into the bag as backup. As is so often the case, the moment I was ready to shoot, the sun disappeared, taking the contrast and what colours there were with it. I'd decided a fast shutter speed was important to what I wanted to achieve, hence the absence of the tripod, and taken the ISO to a place I usually prefer not to go to. As I pointed the camera towards the sea, a volley of foam flew towards me like snow, and throughout the episode I found myself continually turning my back to the scene to protect the camera. Almost immediately it became apparent that more reach was needed - it's always fun trying to change lenses in a storm, or at least so I feel when I'm not actually doing it. In the moments when I could shoot, I'd turn and face the sea, looking for big waves to focus on in rapid bursts.

A while passed and I decided I was done, so began my walk back to the car, only for the sunshine to return as I reached for the keys in my pocket. The prospect of coffee and brunch were deeply embedded in my conscious by now, but I reflected on what was almost certainly a poor collection of images on the SD card and turned around, hastening my stride back to the beach before the sun disappeared once more. Suddenly those dull waves were sporting glowing white crests; suddenly the scene had come alive. I set up by the breakwater once more, facing the regular blasts from flying sand and foam across the beach. I was joined by another photographer who was braving it with his Hasselblad film camera on a tripod, attempting the seemingly impossible with a long exposure. If you don't try, you don't succeed and nobody needs to know how many times you failed after all - even though we all do from our own experiences.

From time to time I'd move my focus from the sea, to the Monkey Hut, to Gull Rock, losing track of exactly how many exposures I'd made. Later on at home I recoiled in horror at the number of shots I'd have to sift through - 582 times I'd clicked the shutter in this briefest of outings. A serious cull was needed and before I'd even downloaded them onto the PC I'd reduced that number to 460. Of those, 285 were taken before the half time oranges in the dull light So I disregarded them completely and downloaded just 175, eventually refining my selection to 74. It's so much easier going out to shoot a calm sea with a big ND filter because there's only time to take a handful of shots. 74 is still enough to cause a lot of confusion.

As I looked more closely at the final selection, two things became clear. Firstly, I should have taken the tripod. Those waves really could have been a bit sharper and I struggle to focus my handheld shots with such a big focal length. Answers on a postcard please. Secondly, it seems that a sorcerer, lit up by the sun and almost 100 feet tall lives in the sea beside Gull Rock. Can you see his pointy hat and his long nose? It's worth coming here in a storm just to see what shapes those enormous plumes develop for fleeing seconds as the waves crash into the rock. There will be plenty more shapes in the coming months as the sorcerer contorts and bends his form in the winter storms that are yet to batter the coast here.

I was glad Lloyd had chosen Land’s End. He’d made himself an appointment with the Armed Knight, which some of you know is one of the pair of very appealing sea stacks just offshore at the most southwesterly tip of the mainland. It seemed like a good plan to me. Usually I get sucked into the classic view, the one that includes the arch, the knight and the lighthouse in the distance - I’ve shot that plenty of times, and why wouldn’t any of us do that? It’s a fantastic sight and tailor made for landscape togs. But shooting the Armed Knight in isolation is something I’ve done less often, and pretty much always from the same rocky outcrop. Today’s outing, the first meeting with Lloyd since he was here twelve months earlier, was an opportunity to try another angle. The intended subject has always been worthy of its own place in the spotlight. We’ll return to that story soon.

Lloyd was sitting in his car, waiting for my arrival at the agreed time. I suspect he’d been doing a little bit of scouting around already, at least as far as the pay station for the car park at any rate. A few expletives later I promised to show him where to park for free next time. Eight pounds fifty indeed - they do like to empty your wallet here, and that’s even before you’ve hefted a load more cash to visit Shaun the Sheep World. Don’t ask. I’ve ranted enough times before here on the subject of the monstrosity that somehow got planning permission here at the back end of the 1970’s, and I’ll say no more. Rip off merchants. There must be at least three billion more aesthetically pleasing and sympathetic ways in which the space at the edge of the world might have been developed. My favoured option would have been a cluster of granite crags covered in grass, with a colourful dressing of sea thrift in May. Shaun the Sheep World my…… oops, there I go again.

While I was more than happy to join Lloyd in the quest for the definitive shot of the Armed Knight, I had a second image in mind while I was here. One I’m always half hoping for when I come to the Edge of Eternity, and with the weather having been quite tasty in recent days, perhaps that lighthouse might be engulfed in one enormous wave at some point. I’ve managed to get that shot before, but not in good light. I’d try again today, and to that end I’d dismantled the inside of the bag and reassembled the inserts in a pathetic attempt to fit two cameras, one of them mounted with the big telephoto lens. I even remembered to dial in the settings before setting off, remembering something I’d seen recently on YouTube that had never occurred to me. I hope I’m not too presumptuous in saying that these days I generally watch Messrs Danson, Heaton and Peter-Iversen for entertainment purposes rather than educational ones, but every so often a stray pearl of wisdom falls and lands in between my ears. Why had I never thought of putting the camera into auto ISO mode to keep the aperture and more importantly the shutter speed where I wanted them to be, as Nigel had done in County Kerry recently? Obvious really, but sometimes it’s easy to overlook the simple solutions you’d never thought of - and that new noise reduction feature is such a lifesaver when you’ve got more grain in your image than a couple of farms in Norfolk combined.

My plan was simple. I’d put the first camera on the tripod and wait for interesting stuff to happen, and every so often I’d grab the other, and point it at the distant lighthouse in burst mode. With a fast shutter speed the handheld approach should work just fine. It meant I’d be sifting through a lot of shots later, and doing the thing I fear most, culling the unwanted ones. None of us enjoy that surely? But if I managed to grab just a handful of usable frames, then that would be the payoff.

There were no huge waves that engulfed Longships Lighthouse this time, well not unless you include the one that smashed its way over the roof as I opened up the bag on first arrival. But as the light came and went and I settled into a rhythm, something else occurred to me. Depth, added by the presence of some substantial rollers halfway between me and the lighthouse was something I might not have spotted if the camera had been mounted on the tripod. Somehow, looking through the viewfinder was bringing the scene much closer and making it easier to understand. Another burst of light through the clouds; another burst of rapid fire on a high shutter speed. Depth, light and aspect ratio. I liked it in portrait mode, but if anything I liked it even more in sixteen by nine.

Five hundred and five raw files were quickly reduced to sixty-seven, of which only two made it into the operating theatre. On the first, the foreground wave curled handsomely across the water before the lighthouse, but the golden light that filtered across the sea and onto the side of the lighthouse and the sea in the second was what I’d been hoping for. I’ve shot the lighthouse on a number of occasions before, but this is the first time it’s appeared here as a subject in its own right. A huge wave smashing over it would really ramp up the stakes, but the great thing about not having captured that means I still have a reason to sit behind that outcrop, now and again poking my head over the parapet and firing away with abandon. Maybe it’ll happen this winter some time, but meanwhile, this one, taken at ISO 1250 makes me very happy and inspires me to come back for more. Which is always a good thing.

PSG v Bate Borisov

Guillaume Hoarau

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ꒌ ЛИТУРГИЈСКА ПРОПОВЕД - По читању светог јеванђеља. Протојереј-ставрофор др Војислав Билбија својом беседом припрема и бодри парохијане Цркве "Свете Тројице" за предстојећи Часни пост.

► █░▓ THE HOMILY - The Divine Liturgy is the primary worship service of the Church. In the first half of it, in the part called the 'Rites of Proclamation', following the Gospel reading which occupies a central place in this section, the priest gives a homily, a medium-length excursus on the Scripture (roughly equivalent to the Protestant sermon). The ten-minute speech reported on this image reflected on the Great Lent, the fasting period which has commenced on Monday following this service. The Lent is preceding and leading to the greatest of all Christian feasts, the "Feast of Feasts" - the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, also called Pascha (Easter).

The perspective and order if size in this image (for good reason completely absent in painting of the orthodox icons) symbolizes the sanctity, the hierarchy of the fulfilled life of the saints as opposed to that of the living, even if they belong to venerable clergy.

Panasonic DMC-G80 with its proprietary kit lens, stopped down to f/7.1 aperture at classical 17 mm medium wide angle focal length, with 1/60 shutter speed safely handheld. The sun broke loose from the murky clouds and stormy wind above Rotterdam just for a few seconds, projecting the changing light patterns over the iconostasis. The camera oddly flattened the huge contrast of this scene, but the details were preserved. The aperture of f/7.1 is in terms of depth-of-field equal to almost f/16 in full frame format. The electronic shutter of the G80 and its silent operation is indispensable during the service.

Developed from raw in Affinity Photo 1.8 and compressed and sharpened in IrfanView. The latter holds up nicely against the competition of bigger brothers and is ideal for fast corrections and batch operations. Not to mention that it is most likely the world's leading viewing software for Windows platform.

~SHORTCUTS~ Press [F11] and [L] key to engage Full Screen (Light box) mode with black background - press the same key or [Esc] to return. Press [F] to "Like" (Fave), press [C] to comment.

Of course every self respecting business has them; the annually reviewed and tested pithy document, guaranteed to cure even the worst cases of insomnia, upon which the big chiefs would resort to immediately if a crisis were ever to occur. In my previous life I even had to propose updates to ours a couple of times, although it felt far removed from what I was qualified to do. As I presented it to the governing body, I made some sage comment about risk being at the heart of every senior team meeting and looked for approving nods around the table in the hope that it had helped to disguise a painful attack of impostor syndrome. I’m convinced that when the pandemic struck, UK plc dug out its own emergency procedures manual; the one that had been dusted off and reviewed, with a couple of paragraphs refreshed and updated before being approved by some parliamentary select committee in the middle of a particularly snoozy agenda when everyone was itching to get to the members’ bar to engage in whatever they’d later be found guilty of. Now they were glad that Jordan and Poppy, the bright young things from Treasury Operations had been to the benchmarking exchange conference in Vilnius last spring and come back with that great idea they’d pinched from Marius and Ruta, their equally irritatingly gifted Lithuanian counterparts. Until that moment it had been assumed they’d just gone for the expense account lunches and the duty free on the way home, but now it seemed their visit had been worthwhile. “It says here we need to close the schools, put half the nation on furlough and get most of the rest of them to work at home.” And then a few paragraphs further down; “who came up with this? Support the hospitality industry by subsidising the punters and paying half the price of their pub lunches on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Genius!” I’m sure the Cabinet didn’t really come up with that at the drop of a hat. They might have claimed the credit, but you can be pretty sure that the Civil Servants did all the clever thinking and implementing. Maybe the soubriquet “Rishi’s Dishes” was coined as a nod to the new chancellor in a hurry by some Whitehall underling with a talent for Cockney rhyming slang, but I’ll bet the concept had long since been lying in Section G, paragraph 143.2(f), waiting for its moment in the sun. In fact, we had a Jordan working for us as an apprentice for a while, but he was one of those rarities us masses come across once in a career, as calm and capable as anyone I’ve ever worked with at any level. Jordan was destined for much greater things than a humble college accounts department, soon leaving us to be fast tracked to manage a large team of staff somewhere secretive before the eve of his twentieth birthday. He had to have “security clearance,” whatever that means – and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he’d dreamed up one of the more inventive schemes that Boris and Rishi pretended was their brainchild. He still sends a Christmas card, but I’m not allowed to ask him about his work unless I want to be dragged away by the SWAT squad in the middle of the night in my jimjams. He’s still only about 24 and I believe he may actually be running the country while Parliament goes on its summer holidays. I hope he’s worked out what the new Prime Minister is going to do to sort the energy price hikes this autumn.

Not all of these thoughts occurred to me in the moments that I heard the sound of hooves on the tarmac behind me, but I knew an opportunity was about to occur and that a sudden change of plan would be needed. Ali and I had just completed a rather wonderful circular walk along the banks of the River Barle, starting and ending at the famously mysterious Tarr Steps as our brief stay at the edge of Exmoor came to an end. It had been an especially pleasing way to complete the day, and the crowds that had converged here when we’d arrived three hours earlier had now dispersed, with only one soon to depart family left wading in the cold water and skipping over the iconic causeway. Now I could at least try something; quite what I wasn’t certain. Photographing the steps in their entirety didn’t feel like it was going to produce much more than what documentary togs call a “record shot,” and I scratched my head as I hadn’t given the matter much thought beyond that. Finally deciding to zoom into a small section with the reflection of the trees in the water balancing the composition, I reached for the polariser and the six stop. In truth, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. It was still probably going to be a record shot and nothing to write to the papers about.

And that was the point at which the steady clip clop sound of approaching horses came into earshot, signaling the fact that a far more interesting spur of the moment shot lay in wait. “I do hope we’re not about to spoil your shot,” came the voice of the first rider. “No, you’re about to turn it into a much better one,” came the response, the only piece of spontaneity that young Jordan might have nodded at in approval. The rest was chaos of course. As the equestrians briefly paused at the water’s edge, seemingly so at my behest, I ripped the two fragile filters from the lens and stuffed them into an already full pocket, before dialing in a torrent of random settings designed to change a long exposure to a very fast one in low light. With very little thought about the enormous dynamic range before me, I hit the shutter in hope as I invited them to cross the ford. Come on now, you’ve all taken the odd shot when any attempts to reduce the highlights later on have left you with a strange pink featureless patch where the sky is supposed to be haven’t you? Even since I realised that the pretty graph on the back of my screen actually meant something, the highlights have been blown to kingdom come on more than one occasion.

Watching Nigel Danson’s three way chat with Mads Peter Iversen and James Popsys last weekend on YouTube, two thoughts emerged from the hour long presentation. Firstly, it was agreed that James, a confirmed disciple of the "run and gun" school of landscape photography is much better at reacting to situations such as the sudden and unexpected arrival of horses than either of the other two with their more considered approach. But then he doesn’t believe in tripods or filters, which is an alien world to me. Secondly, when they were each asked what were their favourite images from their own portfolios, Mads chose a predictably stunning image of some early morning geese flying low across the water on a misty Danish morning in front of a fir forest; a picture he’d confessed he had to do a bit of “hit and hope” of his own in the making of. Did you see it? The picture took my breath away, and I’m used to being routinely bowled over by Mads’ pantheon of extraordinary output. And then I remembered my last visit to Godrevy just before we went to Exmoor and the ritual flight of the gulls to the lighthouse that seems to always happen half an hour before sunset – another moment where I’d locked into a long exposure and missed the chance of a far more interesting shot than the one I was taking at the time.

So I’ve decided that what I need, before I even think about putting the camera in the bag again is a set of emergency procedures; something that makes me a little bit more James and a little bit less Nigel and Mads when the moment of unexpected drama calls for it. They won’t be as long and tiresome as the ones we had to update for audit committee each June, but they will need to be useable in the event of something exciting happening without warning, such as horses crossing a river next to a national landmark of uncertain age, or seagulls making that end of day exodus to Godrevy Lighthouse in huge numbers. It might even be as simple as going to the place us togs sniff at, and putting the camera into automatic mode and letting it decide, or it might be that I need to work out how to use the creative buttons and set up shortcuts for such moments. It also needs to include a section on having a better receptacle than a pocket already stuffed with keys and a mobile phone for the quick and safe storage of rapidly discarded filters. Having the filter pouch more readily available might be an idea – in fact there’s a clip on the tripod to hang it from. And finally, I need to test the emergency procedures in a controlled environment and give myself feedback on how I performed and what needs improvement. I’ll need a tick box form for that. Oh heck - that's a slippery slope I've started making right there.

Or rather more likely, I’ll forget the entire thing until another sudden moment comes careering into the field, catching me unawares and cursing myself at the sound of the white noise between my ears amid the rush of excitement. I’m sure Jordan would know exactly what to do. He was always on top of things when the you know what was flying at speed in the direction of the office fan. For a start, he would have immediately noticed that there was a dog wandering across the Tarr Steps when the photo was taken. I didn’t see it at all until I looked at the image on the big screen at home the next morning. Now where on earth did that come from?

Real Madrid v CSKA Moscow

Champions League

Marcelo Vieira

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🔸◾️ G O D R E V Y - D A Y B R E A K ◾️🔸

📍 Godrevy 🌊☀️🌊

One last photo from a dawn shoot at Godrevy back in April (when it was easier to get up for sunrise!)

I've posted three from this shoot already - including one with this exact composition, but with a faster shutter speed. Which of the set do you prefer (one of these will probably feature in my 2022 calendar which I plan to start working on soon!)

This photo of Godrevy Lighthouse was taken with a minute-long exposure to flatten the ripples in the unusually calm sea for a minimal look. The lighthouse and the island it sits on was just catching the rays of daylight.

Canon 6D MkII | 24-105mm lens at 28mm | ƒ/11 | 56 sec | ISO 100 | Tripod | Lee Big Stopper (10 stop ND) and 2 stop ND grad filters | Taken at Godrevy on 17-04-2021

Copyright Andrew Hocking 2021

www.hocking-photography.co.uk

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Croatia v Turkey

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Trophee Eric Bompard 2011

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I met Carlo a few months ago as I was looking for some honey and I discovered this passionate beekeeper lived only half a mile from my home.

As we got to know each other over time, I found out that this amazing 84 years old was a true genius in building anything out of wood and metal in his well-equipped workshops.

I asked him to help me tame the biggest and heaviest lens I own, so that I could finally mount it onto a 4x5 camera and give it some use.

A few years ago I actually devised a way to mount this beastly lens, but I was never entirely satisfied with the results, as they lacked the solidity such a heavy piece of glass demands.

Carlo was able to quickly solder together a metal cone, permanently attached to a clone of a Plaubel lens board (which he cut and carved by hand !) where the heavy 12 Inch Aero Ektar f2.5lens would snugly fit.

The lens was to be further supported by a metal bracket that Carlo created, inspired by a plastic telescope lens bracket I had showed him earlier, but much, much sturdier than the original one.

Now came the shutter: we opted to drill a hole in a pine wooden board the size of the large packard shutter we were going to use (1/10th of a second maximum speed !!!).

To attach the “shutter board” to the lens Carlo hand-carved a slot of exactly the same diameter of the lens front element rim on the back. Once the rim slid into this groove, a couple of elastic bands were sufficient to stabilize and firmly attach the entire contraption to the camera body.

The heavy 12Inch Aero Ektar Lens can be a wonderful tool, giving you a very Shallow Depth Of Field and a Creamy Bokeh at a great Focal Length for portraiture (at 12 Inch FL this lens does cover 8x10 although I prefer using it on 4x5 and even 6x9, something I am able to do on the old Plaubel Supra camera by just changing the back).

It’s just that the lens is freakin’ big and heavy to mount anywhere but on a military aircraft!

Carlo was able to find a really good and elegant solution (in a retro-post-industrial style) that I truly love !!

My heartfelt THANK YOU to this wonderful, genial, inventor friend of mine!

On desktop/laptop, press "L"-button for the full experience.

Taken out of my window at night. All the clouds were gone and I was finally able to witness all the stars above me using my new 10mm lens. It's simply amazing. Every single dot you see here is a star. When you zoom in on a single dot you are able to see the glow that's coming off the star, which I think is absolutely stunning.

The photo may take a while to load because it is pretty big, and also very detailed.

So, how did I take the picture, and why did I use these settings? Well, to keep my camera from moving I turned off the VR (built in shock reduction) because I don't want it to try to reduce shocks when there aren't any. I also put the focus to manual and use the ring to focus as far away as I can. For these kind of shots you want to control your camera in manual mode. I use an ISO of 800 because the shutter speed is going to be very long. Because I use a 10mm lens I can use a slightly longer shutter speed. When I would have used something like an 18mm lens star trails would appear because the earth rotates, and it rotates just fast enough to make those trails. Also, you want your diafragma as low as possible.

Now once the settings are applied, make sure you find a nice dark area, without clouds or light pollution and either use a tripod or other flat area to set up your camera. I prefer using a infrared remote to trigger the click, but carefully clicking it yourself won't be noticable in the final result if you do it right. I left the editing part out of this because that takes quite a while to fully describe. Feel free to ask questions!

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Real Madrid v CSKA Moscow

Champions League

Cristiano Ronaldo

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Sparta Prague v CSKA Moscow

Europa League

Wilfried Bony

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Portreath was predictably busy when Kathleen arrived on a torrent of white ocean fury yesterday. The unnamed hut where we togs like to set up on days like these was also predictably busy, a cluster of colourful anoraks filling the viewing gallery as wave after wave crashed over the Monkey Hut and swept along the breakwater. On the beach, half a dozen intrepid souls played chicken with the incoming carpets of glowing foam that swept their way to the wall of the walkway below the car park and then slewed from left to right on the way back down the sand towards the waiting sea. On the water, a knot of hardy surfers bobbed about on their boards, waiting for the moment they’d catch a monster and ride it to Wipeout City, Kernowfornia. Cornwall in a storm is always something to behold, and although Kathleen wasn’t a beast of epic proportions, there was enough going on to draw a crowd and let us know she was in a playful mood.

I was thinking of going to Porthleven, where the predicted swells were considerably higher - maybe as much as eight metres. But that involved an extra half hour on the road, and I like Portreath. It’s my “go to” for storms. In fact, the last time I came here to take pictures was in a storm, and that was two years ago. As the crow flies, I live just four miles away, but it only really comes to mind for photography when Kathleen and her friends are in town and the Monkey Hut’s in for another thrashing. Ali surprised me by announcing she was coming with me. Admittedly it was dry, but storms aren’t usually her thing - although I do remember an evening nearly twenty years ago when we came down after work to see what all the fuss on the local news was about. Everyone had been advised to stay indoors, but red rags, bulls and all of that. The waves were pouring over the edge of the car park that evening. Too dark for photos though.

Some years later, once I’d splashed out on a shiny new DSLR and found the elderly telephoto lens from my film days, I came here again; quite often in fact. It was an exhilarating place to take images in those early days. It still can be of course, although I just had a quick run through my Portreath album and it’s mostly storms that have been the subject here - Erik, Freya, Alex, Arwen and Brian are all recorded in the annals. Not that Brian. When Freya came to visit, I took over seven hundred shots, which took a lot of time to whittle down to twenty-eight. I wouldn’t do that today. I’d just take a handful in burst mode and then sit back to enjoy the show along with everyone else. Besides which, that trawl through the archive had given me an idea. And nowadays I have a much newer and sharper telephoto lens that’s almost always in the bag, wherever I go.

So here we were at the Pepperpot, the stoical white bastion that stands sentinel on the clifftop above the village and watches over the ocean. Only now and again have I taken shots from here. Once I won a local photography competition I didn’t even realise I’d entered with a shot from this position. Bizarre that was. Apparently the tag I’d used had been the entry in itself. No brand new mirrorless set up or a holiday in The Maldives sadly - but even so, the modest prize I was sent was unexpected. The photo itself never made it onto Flickr because I didn’t think that much of it, but apparently it’s now on the wall of a hotel further up the coast somewhere. A friend of mine who lives in that direction has seen it, although she thinks I should have held out for a bigger prize. But today my mission was clear. Fast shutter, big wave action, and no competitions. And no way was I taking seven hundred shots this time.

Ten minutes later I checked how many times I’d hit the shutter. I was already up to a hundred and ninety-six. I carried on. It’s like those younger days when you said “just one more pint,” even though you knew where it was leading. I ended up taking over four hundred from up here alone, and by the time the rain came in hard down at the beach, I’d racked up seven hundred and nine on the SD card. Another cull was waiting for later at home, once we’d dried off a bit.

There are four folders waiting, each of them packed with action shots from different viewpoints. So many to choose from, although the surfer won this one for me. Best viewed large - don’t just look on your phone or you won’t see his fins pointing up towards the sky as the moment he’s been waiting for arrives. Kathleen may not be back, but I’ve more to share from here, and folder number four was especially entertaining. I’ll just leave that there then……….

Evian Masters 2011

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World Cup 2010 South Africa: New Zealand v Italy

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Arsenal v Partizan Belgrade

Champions League

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Chelsea v Bayer Leverkusen

Champions League

Michael Ballack

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Arsenal v Sporting de Braga

Champions League

Andrey Arshavin

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KV Mechelen v Lierse

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KV Mechelen v Lierse

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Manchester City v Villarreal

Champions League

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Korea Republic v Greece

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Paris Handball v Cesson

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Inter Milan v Roma

Esteban Cambiasso

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For this photo I wanted to show lots of flowers in the foreground for spring, but I wanted the mountains in the background to be as big as they are in person. To get this I had several obstacles to overcome. First thing to deal with was the 20mph+ winds. I took care of this by using a fast shutter speed. This froze the flowers mid bounce. First problem solved. The second problem was I wanted to show how many flowers there were and for them to be a prominent feature of the photo. This meant I needed to shoot low so I can get more of the flowers. I also wanted the mountains in the background to be as bing as they are in person and this meant I can’t use a very wide-angle lens because it will shrink the background. To overcome this third problem, I would need to stand back from the flowers and zoom in to flatten the image and make the mountains look bigger. I didn’t have to move back too far as the mountains are actually pretty big. I found 65mm was a good compromise with getting the lots of flowers as well as keeping the mountains life like.

World Cup 2010 South Africa: Netherlands v Uruguay

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Lyon v Montpelier

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VfB Stuttgart v Schalke 04

Shinji Okazaki

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Trophee Eric Bompard 2011

Viktoria Helgesson

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Olympique Marseille v Paris Saint Germain

Antoine Kombouare

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So here is my first D800 panorama... captured shortly after ten yesterday morning... from the slopes of Signal Hill.

The light was quite harsh already by this stage of the morning... so I didn't even bother to setup my tripod and pano head... I just set the aperture to f9 for a faster shutter speed... and snapped three landscape-format images hand-held. I was amazed when I zoomed in on these photos while viewing them on my computer later... crisp, sharp details no matter how much I zoomed in... wow... incredible quality... I'll definitely be shooting more panoramas with this camera... bigger than this hopefully... when I can afford a longer lens. :)

I've taken a crop of the juiciest part of this pano... posted it as a separate image... and included it in the comments section below. Feel free to click on that and view it full-screen if you aren't already convinced that this new Nikon is the best DSLR on the market! :)

Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, aperture of f9, with a 1/200th second exposure.

Lille v Rennes

Tulio de Melo

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KV Mechelen v Lierse

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A sculpture sitting at the top of a valley in South Wales.

An ND1000 filter to blur the fast moving clouds.

Celtic v Manchester United

Wayne Rooney

Champions League

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