Unit 23: Photographic Media Evaluation of images - Lake District

I went to the Lakes and as predicted the weather was cold, dull and miserable! For most part of my stay it was fairly dry so I was able to go out and attempt to do my images.  As planned, I took my Canon 500D with the Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens borrowed from college. I also took my tripod and my various ND filters, graduated grey filter and remote shutter release.  I had all the equipment that I needed to carry out my shoot.          

As I was using my ND filters I was getting a huge amount of red/purple tint to my images. This may have been down to light leaking in through the filters.  However, I didn't have the most expensive filters and had to make do with what I had at the time. I was shooting in RAW so I still had the option to make necessary adjustments in camera raw in PS.        

As I was using an ND 4, ND 6 and ND 8 and a graduated grey all at the same time, most of the images came out very dark and red in colour.  I adjusted the white balance to auto and tungsten which still gave me images with a variation of the red. However as I was shooting in RAW I wasn't too worried about colour adjustment.     

The image below was shot with my camera on tripod, aperture set to f/22 and 13 second shutter speed.  I adjusted the white balance in camera raw. To reduce the shades of red I had to dramatically reduce the temperature and tint to get rid of the red and increase the blue and green in Camera Raw.  On the camera calibration tab I adjusted the shadows to green to get an equal balance of almost natural looking colours.  As I took this shot just before 7pm in the evening there was very little day light left.  I increased exposure and fill light to get an even spread of light and also reduced clarity and contrast to get a softer and dreamy feel to the image.  Once opened in PS I created a Selective colour adjustment layer and changed the sliders on the CMYK to get the desired shades of colour I wanted.  I didn't do any cropping to this image as I wanted that wide angle view and to show the vastness of the lakes.  There's also something about big wide open spaces that I really like, fits in well with my fascination for landscape.     

This is my favourite image from that day as I love the stillness of the water.  It looks very peaceful and tranquil. In my opinion it represents what a holiday should be - time away from the mad rush of daily life, to a place where you can sit and ponder and gather your thoughts, with very little distraction. The low light and subtle pastel shades gives this image a nice atmospheric feeling. As it was early evening there was very little activity on the lakes, which helped me to capture the stillness of the water and get a nice clean image with very little clutter.  

I took this image hand held on the following day as I arrived in Ambleside.  It was just as we got off the boat.  It was still a dark and dull day so lighting conditions weren't great. I used f/10 with 1/13th of a second shutter and ISO 200.  Luckily I didn't get much camera shake and managed to get most of the image in focus.  I decided to use the ND's again in order to introduce some form of colour to the image, otherwise it would have looked very grey and not very cheerful.  I ad to do similar adjustments in PS to get the right shades and tones of colour.  I think the shades of green and pink work well with the shades of blue and white on the boat.  I applied slight Post Crop Vignetting to this to focus the viewers attention on the boat.  The effect has worked nicely as it draws your eyes to the centre of the image.           

This is a bit of a classic image you see when you look up the Lake District.  I think it's an image that would be ideal for marketing the lakes as it's representative of the lakes and it's what people expect to see.  Again I managed to shoot this image when there was very few people around.  There's very little distraction in the scene and the leading line of the jetty helps to guide the viewers eyes to the land and hills far beyond the horizon. I applied the same post processing on this image as I did on the precious images.  I did a bit straightening and cropped this image to get rid of the overhead cable that was in the frame.   I used a tripod again for this image, with 1/8th of a second shutter speed, f/9 aperture and ISO 100.  The original image was quite dark so I increased exposure and fill light in camera raw.    

I really love these boats in Bowness.  I photographed them from every angle possible and tried various compositions to get their 'best side'.   However, this shot is my most favourite of the three I have selected.  Being a bit fixated with linear arrangements, I felt this composition showed off the boats really well.  The diagonal line leads very nicely to the jetty in the distance.  Like all the images I have selected it has a pinky/purple tint due to the filters I used.  I think the affect of the filter works quite well on the images and adds a bit more interest and livens up the sky as it was such a dull grey day.  Reducing the pink even further in PS would have left the images looking completely flat and uninspiring.       

Out of all the images I have selected, I feel this is the least interesting one.  I chose this just to add a bit more variety to my selection. In reality this image is far too weak and unappealing to be considered for any marketing material.  Adjusting the white balance has left the image a little too bluey/green. I found it difficult to get the right shade of colour and tone for this image.  The sun was shining a bit too bright so I used the clone stamp to reduce the harshness and diffuse the highlights. This may not have been the right tool to use but I was unsure of what else I could use - perhaps dodge and burn? To get rid of some items that looked like twigs floating in the foreground I used the Lasso tool to select and then edit and fill with content aware.  This is better than using the clone stamp as it can leave lots of smudges behind.  Taking the bits of rubbish out has given a nice smooth feel to the water and would now be more suitable to be used for any possible promotional material. The camera settings used were pretty much similar to the rest of the images as I had the same lighting conditions throughout the shoot.

I don't need to think about printing profiles for these images as they would be available on line.  However, they could be printed as postcards which would mean making sure the correct colour profile was installed in order to ensure the image I'm seeing on my computer is the same as the one I get printed.  There are many retailers who print postcards at a reasonable price but realistically, it's not going to make you a fortune!.     

This is the first time I've used my ND filters and a wide angle lens, so it was a completely new experience for me.  It's made me realise how much I could do with a wide angle lens if I want to pursue landscape photography. I also could do with some better quality filters to get better results when working with seascape and even city scape, as they work really well on water and clouds.  I felt competent enough to carry out the task I undertook for this shoot and came out with some nice images.  Not the best I have produced but if I had better lighting conditions then I'm fairly certain the images would have looked far more appealing.  

Using PS for post processing will enable you to rectify many mistakes but my philosophy is to always try and get it right in camera first.  And I certainly don't have the patience to sit in front of my computer playing around with adjusting images to make them look completely different from what I originally photographed. That to me is digital image making rather than photography.  Overall I feel I achieved my objectives and I'm fairly satisfied with the images I produced.