I enjoy experimenting in photography with depth of field and using different camera shots to create enjoyable images. I hope you enjoy my photographic art work adventure.
Crook Hill View
Landscape Photography
After a mammoth walk up the path to Alport Castles, and along the ridge of the Derwent and Howden Reservoirs, this view looks out towards the Edale Skyline, starting with Lose Hill, the peak that would defy its position looking from the summit of Crook Hill, and somewhere there is Mam Tor and Kinder Scout. Kinder being the highest of the Hills and Tors of this part of the Pennine range. Buggered if I can tell you what they are. I have looked the maps on google, and I still cannot fathom it. May be it is the wide angle of the lens at 17mm giving me the wider scope from my position.
I turned around after taking a picture of the second outcrop on the summit of Crook Hill (which has double summit). The sun had begun its final decent into the golden hour, the back lit hills silhouetted with the hazy mist defining the landscape, the sun being rather bright and it was a tricky thing to do shooting with this level of brightness and into the sun. I did remove the lens flare spots in post processing.
Just out of view, if you follow the tree line from the breaking the trees to the left would be Win Hill. That I do know for sure. The peak nearest the break in the trees I am going to say is Lose Hill. I am open for debate on this, so please feel free to comment.
I have lamented over this particular composition. I tried with a long exposure and I was not happy, not enough definition in the clouds for several minutes of exposure time, and I have stuck with the original test photograph
ISO50 f14 an 0.3seconds. I changed the white balance as it was rather flat, as sometimes RAW tends to produce a flat or washed out image. In Lightroom I used a custom selection, and the sliders to enhance colour.
The icy path is a focal point and a leading line within the image, drawing you to the cloud covered Skiddaw Fell.
A 45ft tower that stands proud on the Strines Moor Landscape in the Peak District just outside of Sheffield
Please enjoy the gallery of the different compositions of the tower
As it is near by to me about 10 minutes or so in the car, and it can be a little challenging waiting for the right weather at sunset. The weather may be different 5 miles away down the valley; fair weather at home and then on the moor it may be totally clear of picture enhancing clouds. However last Sunday was just perfect.
I found it even more challenging as it was windy, and my camera and tripod were buffering in the wind. I did not have anything heavy to weigh down the tripod. I shielded it with my body as best I could.
I like the portrait finish. The colours are at the best with the pinky hues, at low-key light giving a bit of mystery surrounding the tower, with the vapour trail moving sideways during the 7 minute exposure time, and the cumulus clouds above the tree on the horizon
A ten minute exposure of the broken tree on the Derwent Reservoir. I got there and the clouds had some breaks amongst them and the wind was whipping up across the water, helping the effects of the long exposure. For me it is the movement in the grass and is a nice little effect, and the static tree branches reaching out of the water leaving a muted reflection on its surface.
Dsposal UK
I stopped by on my way back from Manchester, visiting friends Tom and Sophie on their new business venture Dsposal. A platform to help people understand about who is responsible for the waste they generate, and who are the correct people to use for transporting it and disposing of it. Their aim to is to reduce the impact of illegal waste activities that result in fly tipped waste by unscrupulous people making a fast buck, and we the tax payer have to foot the bill.
I work in the waste industry, and there are many hurdles to climb over to become a licensed operator be it for transport or for disposing of it. There are a multitude of systems you have to comply with and this is not cheap. If you make a mistake or miss something it can result in increased payment on your permit or licence, and being put on the public register non compliance as little as paperwork errors, even though you operate in a professional manner. The Environment Agency are the people who govern transporters of waste, treatment and disposal facilities, as well as the flood defence, the selling of fishing permits. Their budget tends to come from good operators with the relevant permit fees. The government knocked a massive £200 million from Defra’s budget to the EA over ten years ago, and the EA source funding through fines, penalties, waste permits and licence fees. Legal operators are the easiest to target, because there is a paper trail, documentation, permits, licences etc. Meanwhile the scoundrels of fly tipping united are getting away with crime.
The householders are not necessarily aware they are responsible for the waste once it has left their house, via a skip or man with a van. If a letter with your name and address is found fly tipped you, the householder will be fined.
Dsposal’s aim is to help people and small business to understand their responsibility and to point you to who are legal operators in your neighbourhood by providing a web portal to use information where the Environment Agency (EA) website is not any easy platform to get you to the relevant parts. Dsposal’s aim is to simplify that process.
Please follow the link to Dsposal’s website, I hope you find it interesting and hope you can support them in their venture
My Little Rant
The government are not helping the situation by squeezing local Authorities. The local authorities are charging people at the local hazardous waste recycling centre’s (HWRC’s) for small trades people and even some are charging householder’s who use them, (ergo the council tax???). This has (and along with the landfill tax) had a massive impact on the increase fly tipping, not only that, exporting waste plastic to China has stopped, resulting bulkers tipping shredded dirty plastic form material recycling centres into lay by’s. Increased charges to landfill’s, NIMBYs don’t want energy from waste incinerators nearby (when they pump energy back into the grid or district heating into hospitals etc), when they are subjected to stringent emissions monitoring process. It all adds up – everyone is responsible in some way or another even you the bloody protestor (not in my back yard brigade), who probably does not think about the legal steps that have to be taken for a waste operator to run the business. WHERE DO YOU SUPPOSE THE WASTE GOES TO??? Think of the carbon footprint it will take to ship rubbish from your house to somewhere else in the country or around the world. If t is not local then it is not viable, you cannot balance the sheet for zero carbon etc. Eco warriors have absolutely no idea. Can you think of way for it is miraculous disappear? As long it is not near to you, why should you care? You probably don’t even wash the plastic you dispose of in your recycling bin, resulting in contaminated plastic.
Someone once said to me that they didn’t need to wash the plastic before it went into the recycling bin, as doing so uses too much energy! OMG! I said that was a ridiculous idea, who told you that? There is lot more energy being used to clean dirty plastic at the recycling stage…or does it get cleaned? Hence China has said NO TO IMPORTED BRITISH PLASTIC that we think it is not worth washing before putting into the bin. Some poor bugger has to pick their way through that crap of yours to sort the recyclable from non-recyclable, even before it gets shipped off our shores, across the seas, on those shipping barges holding millions of gallons of heavy fuel oil to propel it along, which is marine pollutant, with all your waste sitting on the ship, and when disaster strikes we have a major pollution incident out at sea, its like nuclear reaction, a chain of unstoppable events, well, it can stop by starting here it can’t it?
All those OfO bikes being smashed up around Sheffield. Have the organisers of that business thought about that? Being so naive that nobody would vandalise their property? Who is going to collect them, and if they cannot be repaired they the business owner are responsible for the sending it on for disposal, re-use, recycle, recover, landfill , incinerate. You become a waste producer, you are responsible for disposing of your waste by sourcing the licenced waste carriers, who will source waste permitted facility which includes scrap yards. I think this bike scheme is a great idea for being green, eco friendly, and also for people to get fit. It is sad that a minority of people are so pathetic and have to spoil it.
Reporting Environmental Crime
Should you see anyone committing environmental crime please report it to the EA. Environmental crime includes burger van cooking oil be poured down the drains, skip wagons tipping in a side street or a lay by, and individuals dumping rubbish from their cars/trailers on to farmers fields. Builders dumping surplus cement into drains, the list is not exhaustive.
If the EA find your name on it – it will be you who will be prosecuted, and not the man with the van or the skip company known as ‘Joe Bloggs’ with a mobile number in the ads pages….
You see it you report it to Environment Agency link
If want to know about your responsibilities or to find a legal operator link up to Dsposal
Thank you for stopping by and I dedicate this post to Tom and Sophie and I wish them the best of luck in this superb brainchild of an idea.
Sheffield has hosted an artists open day for 20 years.
Open Up Sheffield is chance for the artists who live here to open up their studios and galleries and allow people to see what they do, how they do it, and what inspires them to create.
They are opening the doors of the May Bank Holiday from Saturday 5th to Monday 7th and then the following weekend, Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th May.
Henderson’s Popped Orange
It is the biggest open studio event outside of London.
The Curo Gallery is featuring in Open Up Sheffield. Bev Coukham is the curator and her unique selling point of the business is flower preservation displays. She is also a landscape painter. Her husband Dennis does the mount and framing work. Poppy and Truffle are their two gorgeous Collie’s who are friendly and always welcome customers into the Gallery. Bev will be showcasing her art works over both of the weekends of Open Up. The Curo is on Middlewood Road, Hillsborough, opposite Hillsborough Park. Here is the link to the Curo featured artists in the gallery for Open Up.
It is exciting times for Hillsborough; the Tramlines music event, the main venue is moving to Hillsborough Park from Devonshire Green. This will bring benefits to the area. Massive for the local communities and shops, and I hope they reap the benefits of this event. It is a thriving community here, with great transport links across the city, thanks to the Supertram, along with football Sheffield Wednesday.
Both of these events will be financially beneficial to this area.
Port Sipping Chilli
I have had the odd commission and have sold a small number of prints, with special thanks to Bev and her encouragement and for promoting my art work. I had struggled after moving house to get back into my photography. I popped into the gallery a couple of years ago, to see if she would be interested in selling some of my prints, and the rest is history as they say. Here is a link to my website to view my collection in the gallery.
Hendo’s on Black
I am not a featured artist this year however I am considering doing something next year. I am always a little apprehensive about doing things like this. I don’t’ have a studio, a decent place to exhibit and networking is not one of my strong points. It may be time to for me to push the boundaries and step a little more out of my comfort zone.
Reub Guitar II
I am looking forward to this event, popping into some to the studios and galleries, finding inspiration and finding out what inspires others. There are some wood artists which will cheer up my partner, as most things end up revolving around my photography. I do however love wood and enjoy the wonderful things that can be created from it, like this lovely guitar my partner made about 4 years ago, Reuben’s Woodcraft
Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you can come and visit Sheffield and the artist’s studio’s, for those who can get here.
Even an overcast day can lead to some broken clouds and some fabulous reflections. I did a post some time ago and this tree was still hanging on along the edge of the Upper Derwent.
As the day was closing, and I was surprised to find the tree had lost its branches. It made an interesting foreground subject for the Upper Derwent and Howden Dam in the distance
I used a 0.9ND graduated filter for the sky. I wanted to capture the eerie mood across the water
A little known brook feeding into the Upper Derwent on Derwent Reservoir in the Peak District.
A difficult picture to take with the sky blown out and being flat and grey. I used 2 graduated filters (0.9 and 0.3) to balance the shot and bring definition into the clouds behind the two trees. However I still had to bring out shadows in Lightroom
I went on a walk with a fellow photographer to get to Alport Castles however we wanted to find a short cut and failed, and walked through some dense pine forest and ended up on a road above the Derwent Reservoir. We decided to have a ponder to Ouzelden Clough and deviated off the path to the brook feeding into the reservoir. It was an overcast day and not much hope for soaring landscape views from the top of the edge. Water is always good to find for some long exposure work or in this case use of graduated filters
I had booked a weekend away in the Lake District with my partner. A well deserved break, he had broken his thumb and had planned holiday for wood working prior to us going away, and I was full of cold.
We stayed in Keswick after what was looking doubtful after the week of the Siberian blast which closed almost all the northern Pennine routes to the west side of England. I nearly went south to come back up north along the M6. Living in Sheffield we have several ways to cross the Pennines; both the Snake and the Woodhead Passes were closed. The M62 was closed for 3 days due to the sever winds, however it did manage to reopen for the outbound journey. The A66 (via the A1), my preferred route to the north-west was also closed. It did however reopen in time for our return home.
My partner does suffer for my art. However the walk was about 5 miles along the flat. We took the number 78 bus out to Grange, then an expensive coffee in the Lordore Hotel, who were very hospitable, as we were wearing very much outdoors clothing. We continued back along the east side of the lake towards Keswick.
Keswick, a former lead mining town, sits in the north-east side of Derwentwater just beneath Skiddaw and north of Friars Crag. It looks out towards Portinscale and Cat Bells. By the time we had arrived in the Lake District in the north-west part of England they had very little snow, just on the tops of the mountains, you would not think we had a spell of winter at the turn of spring.
The photographs were all taken around Barrow Bay and Ashness Gate. The time of day was crucial as this helped with my muted winter colours in the hour leading up to sunset. I used an ND 0.9 graduated filter for the sky, it brought out hints of salmon pink and purples from the setting sun, enhanced a little in Lightroom. I have never seen such beautifully crystal clean water. No peat staining in this part of the country.
