View allAll Photos Tagged Featureless
Namibia. In the featureless plains between the dunes at Sesriem we find Gemsbok, a stunning antelope adapted to the desert. This fellow is on his way to a waterhole, wary of our distant vehicle he gallops quickly by.
RhB Schneeschleuder Xrot mt 95404 in bright yellow, propelled by Gem 4/4 Nr. 802 "Murmeltier" pause opposite Alp Grüm Bahnhof.
The lok's pantograph is down, suggesting that it is running on diesel power and that the overhead supply has been isolated. Heavy snow covers the ground and the roof of the stone building Albergo Ristorante Alp Grüm behind. The sky is white and featureless with heavy cloud. Light snow continues to fall. The snow blower is crusted with snow overspray from the somewhat menacing bright red augers protruding from the front.
- Novalis.
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The desert is a fascinating location for photography. The word often brings images of drab featureless landscape, but that’s seldom true. The first Desert I officially visited in the United States was at the Joshua Tree National Park, which is home to the hotter Colorado desert to the east and a cooler but drier the Mojave Desert to the north. The Joshua Trees are endemic to the Mojave Desert ecosystem.
During my first visit, I had a sensory overload and had a terrible time getting good images. It's hard not to go for an apparent wide-pano shot that captures the vastness of the place. After quite a bit of repeated visits, I learned a secret, the photographic interest of the Desert is not the color of the golden hour but the texture of its elements. I also learned that the late evening or early morning light works better along with standard or short tele. A desert is one of the best places to break out your tele focal lengths.
Today's shot was taken at one of SoCal's signature desert landscapes, Fonts Point at the Anza Borrego Desert. We were hoping for sunset but had reached way earlier than anticipated. So, I spend some time playing around with focal lengths isolating some of the landmarks visible from our high vantage point.
Nearly, at least - currently he's an adolescent, with one more molt to go before he's an adult. You can tell that because his palps (the "boxing gloves") are swollen, but rather featureless. The next time he sheds, they will attain all the little details to make them the keys to her lock, as it were. And that is why arachnologists are always looking at the naughty bits under microscopes in order to ID spiders; each species has its own distinct shape of "lock" and "keys".
17 Arachtober 2020 2/2
Marbled Orbweaver, Araneus marmoreus
Alexandria, VA
14 August 2017
This house is known locally in the Burra district of South Australia as 'the other house’ because tourists often confuse it with the so-called Midnight Oil house, a photo of which appeared on the cover of that bands ‘Diesel and Dust’ album released in 1987.
The Midnight Oil house is north of the town of Burra whilst 'the other house’ is to the south of Burra.
The front section of 'the other house’ appears identical to the Midnight Oil house however it is larger as it has an extension of at least two rooms on the back, with a doorway on the left-hand side, being the south side.
This doorway gave access to a roofed verandah which has long since disappeared, where the occupants could sit on hot days in the shade and cool of the south side of the house. In the Northern Hemisphere the north side is the cool side.
The dark band running across the grass at the bottom of this photo was caused by the interplay of sunlight and shadow as the grass is actually featureless, and this effect has been accentuated by the focal length of 166mm full frame equivalent (104mm x 1.6).
We`ve had snow here for about a week now , an iv been in work and missed it all :(
had today off and had hoped to get out and get some shots before it all melts , but as usual the weather beat me to my plans , already starting to melt :(
my truck was sick last week , needed a new cylinder head !
so after fitting one on Saturday (Cheers to matty for givin me a hand !) , i thought i would take it for a bit of a drive and see if me and jo could find some snow :)
we headed up to see if we could get to the cat and fiddle nr Macclesfield , but the road was closed , so we ended up here at Tegg`s nose country park . wish i had took a sledge now , sky was a bit grey and featureless for pics :(
Hdr from 3 raws , Photomatix and cs4
Yes I did get soaked about 3 minutes after this....
I almost didn't edit this picture due to poor conditions and flat light but after much manipulation in photoshop it's turned out to be one of my favourite shots.
Full disclosure: The original sky was just white and featureless and the back mountain top was in the clouds. The mountain top is patched in from an earlier shot from about 500m farther back and here skewed into position. The clouds are also from an earlier shot. This required some luminosity masking to get the clouds behind the splash of water in the air.
I had also experimented with various long and short exposures and blending them together into one shot. I tried editing in a long exposure of the water flowing over the foreground rock shelf but it wasn't convincing when combined with the frozen splash. The splash won out. I think I prefer the seeing the detail and features of the rocks. I did however keep the long exposure on the rock shelf emerging out of the water.
A swirling storm of Auroral light, above the area just south of Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
It was tough that night to include any interesting earthly elements in the images,as I usually attempt to ... First, it was a very dark, moonless night, also the Inuvik area is extremely flat and relatively featureless, at least in the dark.
37025 Inverness TMD stands under the small train shed at Wick after bringing in the SRPS charter from Edinburgh after a journey of 361.7 miles..At Georgemass Junction the train was top and tailed after arriving double headed with 37421 leading to Thurso. After coming through some of the most spectacular scenery in the UK the last few miles to Wick are a bit more subdued with flat rather featureless landscape, but a superb trip and a credit to SRPS and the owners of 37025.
This female Marsh Harrier was being mobbed by Red Kites...but those images were set against a grey featureless sky in misty weather annoyingly! So great to see her...even if it's not the greatest shot in the world.
Crossing into the prairie, the land is flat and the houses have wind screens set up around their western perimeter if they don't have any trees. I guess it gets windy there.
The only feature on the land other than manure piles and rolled up hay bales are ravines cut by various waterways. It would certainly be easy to get lost in this flat, featureless landscape.
All of a sudden the sun broke for a fleeting moment to illuminate this beautiful tall grassy reed bed against its dark backdrop. A second later the sun had returned behind a thick cloud bank and the grasses faded into a dull and featureless buff.
The 15th Century 'Old Bridge' at Montmorillon in the Vienne, spans the river Gartempe and in the background the Church of Note Dame dominates the scene. Taken 31 March 2014 (the same day that I took the photo at Bellac posted earlier, of the church of the same name. Strangely, there were totallly clear featureless skies at Montmorillon but much beautifully photographable cloud at Bellac, two and a half hours later. ) Dug out of the archives for the Civray Photo Club current theme on 'Water.'
Camera: Nikon D600
Lens: 24-85 mm @ 24 mm
Exposure settings: ƒ/8; 1/640; ISO 125.
Ref: 20140331-DSC_2020©ELN
A 300° panorama of an aurora from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, in Churchill, Manitoba on February 26, 2022. This aurora was at Kp1 level (very low) and appeared only as featureless grey arcs to the eye. But the camera picked up unusual red colouration, and even some yellow-oranges, along with the more normal greens. The reds are odd for such a low-level aurora as the oxygen reds typically appear only when the aurora gets very active and energetic. The display did brighten later this night when it took on the more classic green arcs, with occasional lower fringes of nitrogen pinks. But at the start of the night the reds dominated.
Orion is at far left (southwest) while Leo is at far right (east). The winter Milky Way arches over the Studies Centre.
This is a panorama of 6 segments with the TTArtisan 11mm full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 for 30 seconds each with the Canon Ra at ISO 3200. Stitched with PTGui.
This used to be a featureless blue sky.
Now that Photoshop CC has introduced a "Sky Replacement" menu that conveniently creates multiple adjustable layers, why should I buy Luminar 4? Albeit, Luminar has many more options in terms of sky samples and enhancements... decisions, decisions. It's like "Do I stay, or do I go?" Or is there an old adage that says something like "You can't have too many tools in your toolbox"?
I may have to build an addition onto my digital darkroom.
Taking photos in the Arctic, far up North or down there in the South corner of the Planet Earth brings a lot of pleasure. I have visited both extreme locations: Baffin Island up North, in the Canadian Arctic and Patagonia at the southern most end of South America. The light created by Sun that travels very low above the horizon can’t be compared with any other location. As long as you have some clouds on the sky, even mid day feels like a morning or evening. It was exactly the case with this photo. I took it about 4 hrs before the sunset. There wasn’t too much of a color on the sky, yet. Nevertheless, the thin layer of clouds diffused the light creating this pleasing golden glow. This added a little bit of a warm feeling to this land that never melts. Big, flat glaciers like Turner Glacier showed on this photo are often featureless. In search for interesting foreground I crossed this glacier many times. One of the most interesting attributes that I found is that there are numerous channels carved in the ice by melting water. This particular channel that is visible on this photo ended with a pit. I can only imagine the waterfall plunging into this blue crevasse.
Here on Earth, we are used to the wind shaping our environment over time, forming smooth, sculpted rocks and rippling dunes. In this way, Mars is more similar to Earth than you might expect.
On the Red Planet, strong winds whip dust and sand from the surface into a frenzy, moving it across the planet at high speeds. These winds can hit 100 km/h, enough to create giant dust storms that settle across huge swathes of Mars, lasting for many days or even weeks.
As these winds travel they carve their surroundings, eroding and smoothing and gradually wearing away the planet’s surface features over millions of years.
Evidence of these processes can be seen in this image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. The image shows part of the Arabia Terra region, which is scattered with craters of varying sizes and ages. The craters in this image, caused by impacts in Mars’ past, all show different degrees of erosion. Some still have defined outer rims and clear features within them, while others are much smoother and featureless, almost seeming to run into one another or merge with their surroundings.
The largest crater in this image also has the steepest rim. With a diameter of some 70 km, this crater dominates the left, southern, side of the frame. At first glance, this image seems to show something amazing in this crater, and in one of its neighbours to the right: is this a hint of blue liquid water? No, it is an optical illusion caused by the image processing. The blue-hued patches lying within the ragged craters are actually dark sediments that have built up over time. Again, this is due to the winds, which carry dark, volcanic, basalt-rich deposits across the planet.
This colour image was taken by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera on 19 November 2014, during orbit 13728. The image resolution is about 20 m per pixel.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Copyright Notice:
This image is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence. The user is allowed to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform it, without explicit permission, provided that the content is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the source is credited as 'ESA/DLR/FU Berlin', a direct link to the licence text is provided and that it is clearly indicated if changes were made to the original content. Adaptation/translation/derivatives must be distributed under the same licence terms as this publication. To view a copy of this license, please visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/
A massive erratic boulder sits isolated on the flat featureless limestone pavement in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The massive peak of Ingleborough looms large in the backdrop and catches the early morning golden light. Summer provides wonderful side light at this particular location, however the price of shooting this was a 4am wake up! So most shots you’ll see at this spot tend to be shot outside of the summer months. Hopefully I've captured something a little different here. Painful but worth it 😅
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Strange things happend that day, on that long extended hike I did. As I stopped for a break in the shadow of this old larch (this is at the timberline in terms of altitude, so kind of harsh conditions up there, at least in winter), it suddenly became totally luminous and was emanating a mystical aura.
It became so radiant that everything, the world of the many things, turned totally pitch-black in comparison and started to fade away, disappeared. A truly mysterious experience! ..at least that's what my infrared camera saw and had. 😛
The original for this is a 360° infrared panorama consisting of 42 individual photos with a trimmed mercator projection yielding ~278,8MP. I took only a portion of it, cropped to 16:10 resulting in a resolution of 16889 x 10556px and still ~178,3MP.
This could have been a nice false-color image, but the featureless sky is merciless when it comes to the dreaded infrared hotspot as well as multi-row stitching, so I wasn't all to pleased with the resulting artefacts that showed up.
That's why I decided to go for a more or less artistic low-key b&w development, why not? When shooting towards or into the sun, my IR setup can produce some amount of 'glow' or 'halation', so working with the highlights I can either tone it down or emphasize it, which is what I did here. There was no editing involved in the strict sense, it's all out there in the mysterious (for us) invisible infrared world.
Nikon D90 (APS-C, fullspectrum mod)
Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 Di ll VC HLD
Hoya R72 (720nm infrared pass-filter)
ISO200, 24mm, f/6.3, 0,6sec
panorama head, tripod, remote
The eastern section of Florida's Big Bend. Florida is so many states in one. I live in the part that is unlike the tourist Florida so well merchandised for the last century. I live in a part of the state that most closely resembles southern Georgia. Getting to the ocean for me is a day trip for the most part, and the tides can be tricky. Not so on the Gulf! All tides are somewhat featureless for the most part. Here, we take a look at the Big Bend before it eases into Panhandle Redneck Riviera. I had this picture sitting around for more than a year before I realized I liked the big "V" of the water coming from the right.
another shot from a few months ago...
the prehistoric standing stone amongst the snow on Hawkhurst Head above Whaley Bridge
(you can contrast with a summer view here)
Technical: Nikon D3x, CPL, 0.45x GND HE, 0.6x ND, 1.6s at f16, 52mm, Capture Nx2
A symphony of white and blue on mirror-like Jokulsarlon lagoon, a natural duotone of cold beauty orchestrated by her's truly, when all elements play together to form Immaculate beauty.
There are moments in one's photographic quest when Murphy is off guard and his laws no longer apply. I had been longing for a daytime shot where conditions would align to reveal the stark beauty of this lagoon and to emphasize the resident icebergs. Over the course of 2010, I have spent no less than 30 days here, so I do believe that I have some appreciation of the location and usual conditions.
Although icebergs are always present, quality, color and especially disposition are variable, even more so when you consider how they are positioned relative to the limited interesting backdrops of the lagoon. This new pack formation had caught my eye the previous day when it formed, however icebergs move, melt and change color. Reflections are not a given, influenced by wind and tidal movement, especially in October. The lagoon has countless days of overcast or cloudless skies.
My morning shoot on the adjacent beach proved rather lackluster, overcast and somewhat featureless until well after sunrise. I decided to return to the lagoon to get some rest and indulge in some special hot chocolate (special = rum). On the way over, I noticed that my area of the lagoon was a quasi mirror and that some light may penetrate an evil cloud bank behind me. That was enough to get me to set-up and waiting. The semi-overcast clouds started to drift away, soon to be replaced by these wispy clouds, some blue sky started to appear…and then I told myself wouldn't it be nice if some direct light could hit my icebergs, and it happened for about half an hour. Cedric 1 - Murphy 0!
On the technical side, I polarized at half strength to produce even sky tones and softer contrast and also added a 2-stop ND filter to smooth the lagoon a wee bit whilst avoiding iceberg and cloud movement.
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Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015 when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. This is the last and most detailed image sent to Earth before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14. The color image has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument that was acquired earlier on July 13. This view is dominated by the large, bright feature informally named the “heart,” which measures approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across. The heart borders darker equatorial terrains, and the mottled terrain to its east (right) are complex. However, even at this resolution, much of the heart’s interior appears remarkably featureless—possibly a sign of ongoing geologic processes.
Credits: NASA/APL/SwRI
The sun just managing not to come out. One of many grey mornings from the last few weeks. On this day we got lost on a walk, crossing a large featureless ploughed field (on a footpath) where the other side of the field wasn't visible in the fog
We have another snowfall yesterday in Vancouver area. And then there will be a few gray and wet days.
This is the view of Fraser River on one of those grey days in the weekend when I had a walk on River Road.
Nothing spectacular as the sky was featureless on the day.
Happy weekend to my friends.
Thanks for your comments and visits!
Perched on the poolside swing. Many of the folk who traversed the featureless and arid plains of the American West owe their survival to this desert adapted bird. The Inca Dove was easily recognized by its scaly appearance. If you followed the course of its flight the bird would lead you to the nearest water hole.
Another one for www.bleedinglondon.co.uk
A short, relatively featureless passage, Cavendish Court spans two postcodes - EC2 and EC3.
Visiting the desert is a good reminder that it’s not a colorless, featureless wasteland. It’s as vivid and interesting as anywhere on earth.
The Lowry, Salford Quays
Another planned visit to Salford Quays today with the intention of trying some long exposures with a big stopper didn’t quite go to plan... dull featureless grey skies, head on drizzle no matter which way I pointed the lens and no inspiration to boot!
But there’s always the Lowry Theatre to pop into for a mooch and a coffee. Hadn’t been in since the refurbishment work on the bar and restaurant started and was surprised to see it fully completed and reopened. What a transformation...
Relaunched as Pier 8 Bar and Restaurant the £3M redevelopment by The Lowry - together with Manchester architects Leach Rhodes Walker and interior designer Koncept have upped the standard for dining in the Quays area.
Gone are the vivid colours and industrial steelwork and aluminium cladding of the Lowry to be replaced by textured materials and high end fittings.
Just to continue with my abstract theme, here are a few images from the new Pier 8.
Helloooo. It’s been a long time. I’ve just returned from a 16 day trip to Scotland. And yes I’ve taken lots of photos with which I’m gonna bore you over the next time ;-) ok hopefully it won’t be boring but it will be quite a few shots from Scotland I’ll post here.
First of all, hell it’s so true what’s told about the scottish weather. So unpredictable. In 16 days I had 5 decent sunsets and only 2 sunrises. Else it was rain or fog in the morning and a downpour in the evening. Not what I had imagined. I knew the weather would be rough but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Damn but I like to shoot sunsets and sunrises, the weather just didn’t let me.
Besides we did have quite fine weather, during day there’s usually rain followed by sun followed by rain and so on which creates sweet light and the possibility to shoot even on midday. A thing which I normally don’t do. But with those dramatic landscapes around, Scotland really provides for a landscape photographer. So even if I didn’t get all the shots I had planned for I’m quite satisfied with the result of the trip.
The first photo I’m showing here is a very special one for me. It was the first decent sunrise during the whole trip. I was in Scotland for 10 days then and quite frustrated because every time the alarm clock ringed at 4am I looked out of the window and saw rain and grey featureless skies. I checked again every hour but usually no change. We had been in the Trossachs 1 day, 3 days Glencoe and now already 6 days on Skye but I hadn’t taken one sunrise shot with which I was totally happy. This unnerved me quite a bit. The first morning in the Trossachs I was out shooting sunrise but it wasn’t the dramatic light and the colors I like. Maybe I’m a bit spoiled ;-) On the morning I took this photo again I woke up to be greeted by rain but it was only one more day left on Skye, so now or never. If I’m not gonna get the Old Man of Storr I’ll at least try the Quiraing and hope for a little clearing in the east to let the light through.
During the 30 Minutes drive north I went past the Storr where again thick clouds were hanging as low as the Old Man, a sight I was quite used to by now. But beyond further north the sky cleared up and I became very excited. I might get a good photo this morning. I parked the car and started shooting, first facing east and then I walked to the more classic viewpoints. The Quiraing is a place where it’s very hard to get a unique photo. I think nearly every comp was done before but I so wanted to shoot this place and damn I don’t care if this view isn’t a special comp nobody has ever come up with. It’s just beautiful light which only for about 1 minute painted the clouds in the south with those nice colors. A fleeting moment but I had the shot and then went on exploring some other comps. What made this moment even more satisfying was that I was the only photographer there and had the whole place for myself. This is not so usual in Scotland and especially not at such iconic views. So that’s the positive effect of the bad weather ?
Details: Hoya HD Polarizer, Lee 0.6 hard GND
cheers
Solid low grey featureless cloud and rain is the weather here to-day, this shot was taken last Tuesday morning.
Best viewed in large: - View On Black
This is NON - HDR..........
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20200516_7095_7D2-125 CB buildup
Note for Crazy Tuesday.
I have had to use an old pic (from a few weeks ago) as we have had here 10+ days of low cloud, mist, drizzle and rain with only 12 minutes of sunshine (recorded the other side of the city) in that ten day period. The only photo opportunity of a cloud in the previous week would be a grey featureless box!
#11864
Looking down to the edge of the small town of Whaley Bridge. Beyond on the far skyline is the great mass of Kinder Scout, a huge almost featureless moorland plateau
I'll leave the why of long exposures for another day and another story. I got a comment on one of my recent posts essentially asking how. So I figured I would put some thoughts down on that. I have done so many of these long exposures that the process is routine and reflexive for me, and doesn't seem all that extraordinary. But then it is easy to forget that there are those that don't share that level of experience or technical knowledge of the how. What for me is routine may not be for another photographer. So I will help make it a bit more so.
Typically I am working with one of three ND filter set-ups. I have two 8.5 stop NDs and one 15 stop ND. I can either use one of the 8.5s on its own, use the 15, or stack the two 8.5s to turn them into a 17 stopper. I have not yet felt the need to stack an 8.5 and a 15, but maybe someday. Anyhow, those three configurations cover all my bases at this time. It is not often I work with only a single 8.5 stop. That will typically get me exposures anywhere from 1/2 second to 1 minute exposures depending on my film and aperture. But while a minute is getting close to the area of time I like to work in, it generally also requires an aperture of f22 and I don't always want to do that (like when I am using the Flexbody tilted and want that shallow plane of focus). Typically I use the 15 stop since my exposures can range anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on aperture. The two 8.5s get stacked when I am pointing into the sun (and stopping down to f22). I have written before about my struggles with UV overexposure when stacking more than one ND filter. So if I am shooting color film and want to avoid a bluish color cast, then I might try to stick with one ND, but with b&w film, I'll use whatever combo I need to get out to the exposure I want.
With those set-ups in my bag, the first step is to look at the light. Bright days are going to require heavier filter work. Overcast days mean less so. Or if what I am photographing has a lot of movement, like clouds on a really windy day moving fast, then I might go lighter as well. There have been scenes where the clouds are moving so fast that the 2-4 minutes exposures I did rendered all that movement into a featureless blur. But light is almost always a good place for a photographer's mind to start. You cannot do much without light, so having a good grasp on the light in front of you is important.
Then I'll get the composition set up. Since that has less to do with ND filtration I will let the lessons on how I compose be communicated solely by the image itself.
And then it is math time. Yes, there are apps for this and if you don't like math then get one of them. I don't mind math and I happen to be good at it, so I just calculate it in my head and on my fingers to double check myself. I start with a basic meter reading at the aperture I plan to use. Let's say this scene here gave me 1/500 at f16. From there I look at the ND filters I intend to use. If I was going to use the 15 stopper for this, then I need to adjust my exposure by that many stops. Exposure doubles every stop. So 1/500 to 1/250 is one stop. 1/125 makes a second stop. And so on. Eventually you get to 1 minute, which in this case is 15 stops over 1/500. Count it out on your fingers and see for yourself. Tip: you go from 1/15th to 1/8th and 8 seconds to 15 seconds for easier math. Because then 15 seconds doubles to 30 and that to 1 minute. Otherwise 1/15th would double to 1/7.5th and that would double to 1/3.75th and so forth. My current method may be less accurate but it involves cleaner numbers.
Once I see that I will be at a minute exposure, I decide if that is long enough. I could stack my two 8.5 filters and double and double that 1 minute exposure again to arrive at 4 minutes if I wanted. But we'll settle with the 1 minute exposure on the 15 stopper for now. At this point, since I am using film, I need to account for reciprocity failure. All film slows down at long exposures (technically the film is slowing down as a factor of the reduced light, not the increased time) and off the top of my head, I don't know a film that doesn't benefit from a bit of compensation at a 1 minute exposure. My easy math here is to just add another stop, doubling that 1 minute exposure to 2 minutes. If I am shooting Kodak Ektar, which I know from experience to slow down a bit more than most films, I might double that time again to 4 minutes to compensate. But typically I am adjusting my semi-final calculations double or quadruple to help with that loss of speed. When metering, if my shutter speed is in between two set speeds (like 1/400th) I will also round down to the nearest common shutter speed, which also helps add a bit more light. Especially with negative film it is hard to over-expose and with these long, ND filtered exposures, easy to under-expose. So when in doubt, always add more light, not less. On a couple of occasions I have set up a shot with the intention of using that 8.5 stop ND filter, set my exposure, fired off a long exposure and then realized I forgot to put the filter on the lens. Even on those occasions, while the negatives looked far from great, I still got usable images even 8.5-9 stops over-exposed. Seriously, film is forgiving stuff in that sense.
And that is about it. Really. Most of it comes down to being able to meter and then count. There is certainly an aspect of knowing how which scenes will react to which duration of exposure, but that is more the art of it and less the science.
Anyway, that is my method. Just wanted to share that.
Hasselblad 500C
Kodak TMAX 100
The snows of Eryri have more or less gone for now, maybe until next winter.
This has led me to thinking of the coming spring and summer which, while not usually my favourite times of year, I'm strangely looking forward to.
This shot was taken almost two years ago in my first summer living here in Snowdonia and one which I had resigned to the bin because of the blue, featureless sky...
Looking back, it was a wonderful evening, spent alone in one of the grandest cwms on Snowdon.
I'll be going back there to camp out this year.
Mount Dana, at over 13,000 feet, always makes a nice subject to contrast with the exotic limestone tufa towers at Mono Lake.
I accidentally woke up around 4:30am, so it was easy to drive the rest of the way here in time for a very early dawn. There was new snow on the ground down by June Lakes, but it hadn't stuck to the road so driving wasn't an issue. At the South Tufa access to Mono Lake, nothing to speak of happened at sunrise, it was very gray and featureless, but then the storm started to break...
Dick's House of Sport promo blimp
This thing had been flying around the area for several days to draw attention to the grand reopening of a nearby sporting goods store. Somehow I never had my camera with me to get the image that I wanted, but I finally did. Well, almost. The original image had an absolutely featureless sky, but you can do wonders with photography software these days...
The first thought was that someone had thrown a football at my head. It seemed unlikely – I didn’t know anyone around here and I’d absented myself from five a side that evening because after nearly a week of incessant rain and doubtful grey skies I wanted to go out into the sunshine with the camera. But in those split seconds of this unwanted exchange it dawned on me. Footballs don’t have wings and feathers but seagulls do, and everyone down here knows about their famed air raids on innocent souls carrying food in an obvious manner. Even Belgian Chocolate ice creams are considered fair game by those scavenging sky hyenas, and most of mine was now lying on the ground in front of me. It was a double scoop as well. I now had two options – I could either return to the hut past all of the amused spectators and buy another one, of which I’d take much better care in open spaces, or I could adopt a nonchalant air, as with pace unbroken I strode to the nearest sand dune to sit and sulk in the sunshine. I chose the latter course of action. And you thought this stuff only happened to unwary tourists didn’t you? We locals smirk quietly behind our hands when hapless visitors get mobbed by Herring Gulls in pursuit of pasties at St Ives, so in truth it makes us look all the more idiotic when we're subjected to the same fate. I can still almost taste that lost dollop of Belgian Chocolate lying melting on the car park floor. Callestick Farm ice cream too - what I'd tasted before the airborne assault had been moments stolen from the very heavens. Ironic that something from the heavens should steal if from me really.
Some time after this disturbing setback Lee arrived, and he was looking very pleased with himself. Of course I already knew why. He’s a man who changes his camera systems almost as often as Elizabeth Taylor did her husbands, and more than once I’ve arrived on location to find him wielding something completely different from the time we last convened without prior warning. If he ever stops buying and selling things, your favourite auction website may just have to close down, and that time may in fact now have come. Not that I’ve studied the life and marital events of Ms Taylor that closely, but think of the Sony A7r3 as his Richard Burton – the one he returned to and remarried; his spiritual home if you will. Last time he had one of these, I rarely heard him talking about other cameras, and since he was parted with it, he’s often lamented on the shortcomings of whatever he was using at the time in comparison to the Sony. With the addition of the same lens that our much admired Mads Peter Iversen so often uses, it seemed that my friend’s ceaseless wandering through the labyrinthine pages pages of eBay may at last be over – although I’m not racing down to Ladbrokes to fill in the betting slip. Besides which he hasn't found a wide angle lens to complete the bag yet. To make his triumphant grin just that bit wider, he’d managed to secure both camera and lens at very agreeable prices. Understandably he was happy at the outcome.
While I was pleased to see that Lee’s inveterate habit of camera philandering might finally be over, I had to admit to the presence of Iago’s green eyed monster on the beach. With Iceland to come later this year, he’ll be carrying a much lighter set up than me when we go marching up those slopes to the vantage point over Reynisfjara and Dyrholaey. While he has experimented with almost every brand on the market over the last few years, I’ve stuck steadfastly to the one I know and have gradually begun to make sense of. I may have upgraded the cameras and lenses, but each time the leap has been incremental. The gear I have is limited by my skills (or lack of them) alone, with the only downside being the weight of both the camera and the lenses. Most of the time that isn’t really an issue; except when long walks and handheld photography are on the menu. But there is a fighting chance that sometime soon I might find myself dabbling with a Sony too.
We’d decided a visit to the Mount was long overdue. It’s such an obvious subject, and one we shot far more regularly in the early days of our landscape journey, but in the last two years I'd only been here twice, despite it only being half an hour away from home. We were caught in two minds about where to set up our tripods, the decision being made easier by the fact that someone has put up what I can only describe as a giant polytunnel right in the middle of the façade that everyone sees from the central part of the beach. While there must be a purpose, it's a hideous addition to the Mount and my Photoshop skills fall short of airbrushing it convincingly from the scene. But for that we might have looked to the sidelight for our inspiration. But huge plastic edifices aren't going to be part of the story today.
In winter you can grab silhouettes from the eastern beach below the cliffs with the sun setting close to the mount, and despite some misgivings about the almost total absence of cloud we agreed this option would enable us to continue shooting well into the blue hour. The retreating tide meant that the foreground selections were forever changing, never lasting for more than a few minutes before losing their appeal. I took a number of shots during the moments before sunset and into the blue hour and in truth I liked all of them, so choosing one to share here wasn’t an easy decision. The rest either have appeared or will appear on the other channels where I share more of my photographs, so you’ll probably make your own mind up on whether I chose the right one to tell the story, but I loved the leading line made by the rockpool and the colours of the deepening sky. Bringing the tripod low, so helping to reduce that tricky featureless mid-ground that can so often slice a scene irretrievably in half was also important, and the long exposure time smoothed the sea to reduce the distractions. Almost worth the trials of negotiating my way back across the beach over wet slippery rocks in semi-darkness towards the steps that would lead to the pub and a very expensive pint of Korev, which Lee in his benevolent mood paid for. At least the seagulls wouldn’t be troubling us here in the warmth, surrounded by four walls under a solid roof as we were. I sometimes wonder whether our obsession with clouds can sometimes mean we overlook the simplicity that a plain sky brings, especially when it’s packed with so much colour. The lessons never stop being learned.
The cliffs on this stretch of the coast were mined for Allum for many years and the waste shale creates a landscape known by locals as "the Moon".. The ideal test flight for my drone on new propellors then, with a voyage across the lunar landscape before returning to Earth! This view is between Sansend and Kettleness point on the North Yorkshire coast. A hazy sky opened up in the breeze and I shot panoramas with the Mini 4 Pro, the drone makes up huge JPEG images which are excellent. I use the wide angle setting with nine shots stitched but the device will make 180 and 360 degree panoramas. The barren area is mostly a featureless grey but has been colonised, in parts, by hardy moorland plants. My original plan was to capture the Heather in bloom but it has started to go over.
A big Pano just to give some perspective on the mist on Sunday morning. As far as the eye can see!!
This is 6 horizontal shots stitched together to a massive 24000 x 4300 (1.4GB) file. Ive posted a 5000 x 883 (1.6MB) file.
I didn't get to much sky in as it was featureless so ive cropped it of, I have got one in Portrait mode but ive not processed than yet, that will be even bigger at 10 shots.
Anyway, a great view looking out over Staffordshire in the White Peak District
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This Pacific golden plover (Pluvialis fulva) recently completed an amazing migration of 3 to 5 days and nights, non-stop from Alaska to Hawaii. After a 3,000 mile journey over the featureless North Pacific, it not only finds the island but navigates to the exact territory it defended the previous winter. Typically an insectivore that prefers open grassy areas, this one discovered wading in shallow, brackish mudflats on the coast of Maui provided an opportunity to enjoy a meal of fish.
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We pulled over to one of the many pullouts along Skyline Drive that offered a nice distant view as well as plenty of foreground colors. I thoroughly enjoyed the clouds and light that nature had in store this evening. Unlike a featureless blue sky would have the clouds and haze darkened the background, diffused the light, and created shafts of light illuminating the land below. All of that combined helped the colors stand out boldly, whether the yellow ... #etbtsy
While enjoying this spectacle we spotted another object of interest. A beautiful praying mantis was enjoying the low barrier wall and basking in the late sun. These insects are so different than anything else. They're large but not bulky, very thin indeed but still with ...
Actually, more like ... Out on a Twig ...
I believe this to be a baby, (Well, maybe more of an adolescent) Great Gray Owl. It's no wonder, cultures throughout history have attributed powers of preternatural wisdom to this beautiful family of creatures ... There is definitely something mesmerizing about those eyes ...
I shot this under very poor light , early evening, against featureless overcast, so I had to tinker with the brightness and contrast a bit ... I think it came out looking like a very minimalist sort of Audubon painting.
Salisbury
Moving on from Stonehenge and continuing with our disastrous Friday. We had booking into the nearby Premier Inn (always good value) and decided to catch the park and ride into the town centre rather than drive around an unknown place looking for somewhere to park in the middle of the rush hour. Three buses passed us on the way out of town but the first two didn't return - it's a shuttle service we were told!. An hour later, the third bus returned and we eventually got into town after six. All the shops had closed so the first stop was somewhere to eat and then a walk to the Cathedral in time for the sunset. Note the featureless sky.
It was a wonderful blue hour but the vastness of the sky against that spire wasn't working for me no matter what processing technique I tried. If all else fails try a B&W conversion and hey presto... I'm actually happy with the result so it's a quick posting rather than a full research and write up on the cathedral history.
Abell 30 is a small (127 arc seconds) extremely faint planetary nebula located approximately 5,500 light-years away in the constellation of Cancer. Abell 30 is one of just three known nebulae called born-again planetary nebulae. Very rarely, nuclear reactions within the vicinity of a white dwarf can heat the gases to such high temperatures that the tiny star briefly becomes a red giant once more. This is a very brief phase, lasting a mere 20 years or so. The original nebula is estimated to be around 12,500 years old (which in itself is very brief in astronomical terms). The tiny features in the centre of the bubble are evidence of this re-birth. They are most probably comprised of helium and carbon-rich materials and were ejected around 850 years ago.
The Ha signal is a featureless disk. All of the structural detail comes from the OIII signal.
Image captured on my remote dual rig at Fregenal de la Sierra in Spain between 14 December 2021 - 9 January 2022.
Scopes: APM TMB LZOS 152 Refractors
Cameras: QSI6120wsg8
Mount: 10Micron GM2000 HPS
A total of 102 hours image capture (HaOIIIRGB)
Crawley Boat Shed
I couldn't resist paying a quick visit to this super popular icon down on the shores of the Swan River. It was a featureless sky with golden light. Nice to be there, not very exciting photographically but a good visit for a future return !
- www.kevin-palmer.com - The prairies of South Dakota may be flat and featureless most of the year. But during the late spring and summer the plains also have mountains. They come and go in the form of towering storm clouds. Even though the air was still it felt heavier and heavier as the humidity increased. A sudden wind shift brought a blast of cold air from the outflow boundary. The rain was still a mile away but already I could feel the spray caught in the wind. An hour earlier, the supercell ahead of this one dropped a tornado to the north, which I missed by just a few minutes. While Wyoming has had a very wet spring, the Dakotas have been in the midst of a severe drought. Many of the grasslands were noticeably less green than usual. This was the first major rain storm of the year, which I’m sure the local farmers appreciated.
After several rather unsatisfactory visits over the past few weeks, I was finally able to just about get the shot I've been trying to get today.
I'd been waiting for the right combination of being able to set up a tripod for a long exposure, combined with a vaguely interesting sky, the sun in the right position to be able to avoid harsh shadows on the building, and not so many people all around it that I wouldn't be able to largely blend them away with the long exposure.
I had to wait quite a while for the sun to be out long enough to meaningfully register in the two minute exposure. And although I was hoping for some nice blue sky with a smattering of clouds, we ended up with this rather moody grey sky which I feel does the job of making the sky at least interesting.
On a couple of previous occasions the sky was just plain featureless blue which was a bit boring. And the last time I visited was a total blow out as there were teenage fans sitting all over the steps already queueing at lunchtime for the evening concert that day, so even a long exposure wouldn't have done any good in removing them!
In this frame, there was a couple with their son (obviously a recent music graduate) who spent an awfully long time taking pictures of him in front of the Albert Hall from every conceivable angle, sometimes standing still for minutes on end in various positions, but they are rendered as a vague blur here.
Anyway, this seemingly pretty simple and basic photograph took quite some time and effort to finally achieve! Now I can call it 'done' for the time being and move onto the next on my hit list. I have to say I'm really impressed again with the performance of the Firecrest 16-stop screw-in ND filter at doing a great job here. Having struggled for years battling odd colour casts with my previous ND filters this one really does seem to hold up with minimal changes needed in Lightroom.
This is another prime example of a Grade I listed building in London, officially #1217742 at Kensington Gore, Kensington, London, SW7 2AP.