Busy Wells

This week has been a relatively quiet one for me, the weather hasn't been particularly good so most landscape photography was put on hold. I have been trying to walk along the quay in Wells-Next-The-Sea whenever I could during the daylight just to get some air. High tide coincided with the middle part of the day this past week so it was great to see the fishing trawlers busily coming and going, unloading their catch and preparing the boat for the next voyage. The Fujifilm X100 is great to have at hand on these sort of days as it's so small and inconspicuous people don't even bat an eyelid when you take their photo. I've been starting to use the electronic viewfinder (EVF) instead of the optical one. This has been slightly weird for me as I am so familiar with the excellent optical types on my Nikon DSLRs which are crystal clear. It has taken a bit of time and patience but I have to say I am now becoming rather fond of it on the Fuji. It allows me to check exposure, live histogram and horizon level all at once and when your eye becomes accustomed to the set up the whole thing becomes surprisingly user friendly, (and this on the older X100). The EVF on the new XT 1 is meant to be absolutely amazing and could truly revolutionise the way we all shoot in the future... I had better start saving. 

Coming home

Tying up

    

Little Blossom

This little blossom tree flowers every year around mid to late March. I love seeing it in bloom as it adds lovely vibrant pink colours to the garden. The flowers only last on average about ten days before the winds knock the delicate petals off the branches, but it's something I look forward to every year. It always fills me with joy when I see it flower.

Photographed with the Fuji X100 shooting towards the sun, I wanted to show the flowers against the bright sky as this is how I always see the tree when looking out of the window or standing on the patio. I overexposed the image by 1.3 E.V. to ensure the tree wasn't silhouetted against the sky. This 'blew out' the background giving the photograph a slightly dreamy effect. I'm now going away for five days and by the time I return I suspect the flowers will have all but gone, but I know it will be something I look forward to again early next Spring.

Pink Blossom

    

Cley Windmill pt. 2

Cley windmill

I wanted to post another image from my recent Cley shoot. This time a landscape orientated view. Taken just a few minutes after the previous shot,  http://brettgardnerphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/cley-windmill.html, this one clearly shows the setting sun and the light hitting the reeds and side of the windmill. I'm not sure which is my favourite one.... perhaps I'll use them both.  

Cley Windmill

Cley Windmill

The windmill at Cley-Next-The-Sea on the North Norfolk Coast is a well known landmark and it attracts many visitors both from the U.K. and further afield. This image was taken just as three weeks of restoration work at the windmill were completed. During this time both the fantail and the four sails were either fully restored or replaced altogether. Along with my girlfriend I was asked to document the work so that the owners and future visitors could see exactly what had been achieved during the three weeks of restoration. I will be writing a post on this shortly but in the meantime you may like to read this.  http://brettgardnerphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/cley-windmill.html

Before the sometimes brutal coastal weather started to batter the windmill once again, I decided to take a couple of images that would hopefully show it at its best. I had already scouted the location and decided on the above composition, the little dyke acting as a great lead in line, the tall yellowy brown reeds further accentuating this. I waited patiently for about 45 minutes, camera in position, cable release attached, hoping that the sun would explode from behind the low blanket of cloud that had rolled in not half an hour beforehand. Just as I thought all was lost out it came, blazing light across the field, hitting the side of the windmill and lighting the low clouds, turning them a lovely orange colour.

I always think about the shot long before I set it up and I knew that this one would present a slightly different challenge to the other landscape images I've taken recently. I normally use ND grad filters to balance the lighter sky with the darker foreground but in this instance I didn't feel that was possible. Doing so would almost certainly mean cutting through the windmill making it artificially darker than it looked to the eye. The only way round this was to capture several exposures of the same composition and blend them together in Photoshop later. The dynamic range across the image wasn't as great as first expected so I only needed to combine two images to achieve the desired effect. The image has turned out just as I had imagined, showing the windmill at its absolute best. I'm hoping that it will be a good seller in the future once it's finally printed, mounted and framed. Fingers crossed....      

The Malthouse Yard Quay

The Malthouse Yard Quay at Brancaster Staithe on the North Norfolk Coast is a fascinating place to visit with a camera. There is so much going on, so much detail to capture, it's sometimes a bit difficult to take it all in on one visit. I've been there several times in the last few months and each time something new catches my eye. The main area of the Quay homes several fishing boats, from the small to the rather large, each a worthy subject for a bit of landscape photography. 

On my last visit I decided I wanted to capture the Quay itself rather than the many close up detail shots that I had taken previously. I also wanted to include the lovely old wooden three storey building behind the Quay, something that seems to be a local landmark at Brancaster. Waiting for the sun to drop sufficiently I set up the camera, chose my composition and waited. Just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, it cast a lovely warm fiery glow onto the side of my main fishing boat subject, illuminating the worn out wooden structure and peeling paint. The clouds, a brooding mixture of bruised black, red and orangey colours slowly disappearing, enveloped by the encroaching twilight.     

I used a three stop ND filter on my Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8 lens to balance the lighter sky with the darker foreground, carefully adjusting the exposure settings as the light constantly changed. The Nikon D4 was set on a tripod and a cable release was attached with the camera set to activate mirror lock up when the shutter was pressed. This was done to avoid any possible vibration that could be caused by activating the shutter at such slow speeds, in this case 1/4 sec. An aperture of F11 was selected to ensure back to front sharpness and it's a particular sweet spot on this Nikkor lens. The detail on the large res file viewed at 100% is fantastic. You can make out the writing on the small white board to the left of the picture which reads 'Seafood snacks'. With this in mind I'm feeling a little peckish so I might go grab some lunch. I wonder if we have any fish fingers...... 

The Malthouse Yard Quay at Brancaster Staithe, North Norfolk

Little Boat at Burnham

As the days are getting longer I find myself staying out later and later, patiently waiting for the sun to dip low upon the horizon, its warm orange glow casting wide across the vast skies of the Norfolk coastline.

Burnham Overy Staithe was peaceful this particular evening, warm too. Spring is a fantastic time to be a professional landscape photographer, the memory of the short and cold blustery days of winter slowly but surely fading from the mind. I'd set up the composition in my camera a good 45 minutes before the sunset, ISO and aperture all dialed in, ND grad filters at the ready. As the moment arrived I checked my exposure, made sure the 3 stop grad was correctly positioned and pressed the shutter on the cable release.

I think what I really love about this image is the detail. On the horizon viewed at 100% you can quite clearly see the small houses, probably all of half a mile away, basking in the last moments of the fiery orange sunset. A truly pleasant place to be for all concerned.

Fiery orange sunset, Burnham Overy Staithe

Pentax P30n

My sixth SLR in my 12 months of film project and February's choice is the Pentax P30n. If you would like to know what I've used so far in the five previous months and get an overview of what this series is all about click on the link, http://brettgardnerphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/12-months-of-film.html

The Pentax P30n was first issued in 1988 and for me just about holds on to the good looks of the classic film SLR's from previous decades. I say this because as they approached the Nineties a great deal of manufacturer's cameras became ugly blobs of plastic and quite frankly looked pretty hideous. Certain unsightly design cues were starting to creep into the looks of the P30n. Like the rubberised grip on the right side of the camera with P30 emblazoned right down the front and the recessed  top mounted dials which do nothing for a cameras looks. Saying that, I do really like the look of this camera for some reason. It pulls the Eighties look off quite well, something I don't think the Canon T50 and T70 models of the same decade manage in the slightest.  The P30n is a full manual SLR which can also be used in aperture priority mode. It has a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 sec with a bulb mode also available. The camera uses DX coding to set the film speeds and there is no way of setting this manually. If a film without DX coding is loaded then the camera will automatically select a film speed of 100. The body is made of a hardened plastic but is reasonably solid to the touch and it's a great little camera to hold and operate feeling pleasingly tactile. The film advance lever is positive and the shutter fires with a nice crisp snap offering better dampening than older cameras like the Zenit TTL from last months post. A nice bright viewfinder allows easy composition and focusing and the lens on this particular camera had a nice feel, allowing easy and smooth focusing. The P30n uses two LR44 or equivalent batteries which is great because these are still easy to buy and cheap.

Front view of the Pentax P30n

Rear view

Top view showing the film advance lever, speed dial, film rewind dial and on/off switch

The Pentax M f1.7 lens. You can also clearly see the recessed dials on the top plate

So what was the camera like to shoot with? Well, rather lovely as it turned out. As I mentioned above it feels good in the hand, has a good clear viewfinder with a quality lens and a nice crisp shutter snap coupled with a great feeling film advance lever.

The images from the camera are great. Using a cheap Agfa Vista 200 film as used with the other cameras so far in this project, the colours are good, images sharp with some great grain structure. My favourite image taken with this camera and roll of film is the top one, 'Hello Mr Horse'. It just has a great feel to it which is really difficult to capture with digital, especially when shooting towards the sun.

I hope you can come back and visit the site in a month's time, (if not before) as I start the second half of the '12 month's of film project'. See you then.

Hello Mr Horse

Two Horses

Fishing boxes

Old Anchor 

CL-PUP

The Four Sisters

I've spent quite a lot of time at Morston recently, looking for suitable subjects to photograph. I reckon this is my favourite image to date as it sums up Morston quite well. Seal viewing trips run from here on a regular basis so this boat is both popular and fairly iconic to the local area. I've wanted to capture a suitable shot of both the boat and the place for a while now, one that showed it in a way that Morston makes me feel whenever I visit. It's a place that's quite bleak and lonely but at the same time peaceful and allows time for reflection. I think this image works for me because it's both calm and slightly bleak, warm sunset but ominous stormy clouds. It's a place that's a bit of a contradiction, a place that leaves me slightly cold and restless, yet somewhere I find inviting and am always willing to return to.    

The Four Sisters of Morston

Photographed with a Nikon setup. D4 with Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8, tripod and cable release. 3 stop ND grad filter.

Echo at Blakeney

Blakeney is a beautiful small town on the North Norfolk Coast with quaint little lanes and small independent shops all leading down towards the bustling quay. There are many things to see and photograph and it's a place I will visit again as the days get longer and hopefully a good deal warmer.

I stumbled across this small yacht called Echo on the quay front a couple of weeks ago just as the sun was setting and the sky was turning a lovely salmon pink. I set up my Nikon D4 and Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8, attached a ND grad and shot towards the sunset. I wanted to include the entire height of the yacht whilst remaining close to the bow and the only way I could do this and keep space to the right of the boat was to shoot a panorama comprising two frames. It worked pretty much as I intended and i'm pleased with the final result.  

Echo