Spring - A Short Series of Images Taken in Spring 2006.

The intermittent weather over the past couple of months has led to intermittent opportunities for photography. Perhaps it has also provided more interesting, variable light, but I digress. What follows in this page, and perhaps a couple more, are just a few images I have taken out and about (mainly at Cliveden, NT).

All images captured on a Canon digital SLR, RAW processed using Canon's own Digital Photo Professional, and then batch converted into JPEGs (the process seems less straightforward for images taken in portrait format).

I am no natural historian, all I can tell you about the image on the title page is that it was right next to the car park. Standard 28/105 lens.

Anyway, this page features a number of images taken at Cliveden. Most have had their saturation increased. Very few have had their sharpness increased, as this didn't look quite natural in DPP. The exception is the newly emerged leaves with 'blossom' dangling - the sharpening really added something (particularly to the print), the same goes for the bluebell.

The first image is a general view, typical of the Japanese themed water garden. I'm reasonably pleased with it and look forward to receiving a print of it from my local digital processor. The circlular ripples in the bottom right add foreground interest.

In the next image the leaves were particularly difficult to capture. The Spring weather was causing a great deal of movement in the branches, which really challenged the autofocus. I selected manual focus, and using the digital 'scattergun' approach got a couple of images I was happy with.

This bluebell stem formed part of a clump, near the ornamental lake. I like the diffuse background, I don't like the fact that the narrow depth of field has put some of the flowers out of focus. A lot of sharpening has rescued this image for web publishing but the equivalent print would look very poor against other flower pics, particulary if taken in windless studio conditions.

I was aiming for foreground/background interest. The foreground is only about 6-7 inches off the ground. It stands proud of its foliage by about three inches. Lying on the lawn I did not realise the foliage was interspersed with nettles. I had hoped to achieve some sort of front to back sharpness, but the nettles put me off.

In this image I was intrigued by the large flowers of blossom above my head. It is helped by the blue sky with the occasional fluffy cloud. The very wideangle lens adjusted the perspective but the composition remains a little untidy. This is about the only image I have ever taken that seems to have benefitted from a movement in the Hue slider. In this case it has moved slightly to the left (reduced??).

The next image seems to be a classic in club photography. The background is rendered completely dark. The foreground is bright, but sadly the aperture has not allowed the subject to be fully in focus. It's only a minor niggle, but one which any judge would pick on.

This image shows two Spring blooms and very fresh leaf growth. I was very pleased with the white bloom on the right and the leaves (neither of which translate well as web images), but the bloom on the left and the ones in the background serve as a distraction.

The distinctive flower of the gunnera. The leaf looks like a giant rhubarb. There is a great portrait of the TV gardener Chirs Beardshaw amongst the leaves of a gunnera. It looks like it could have been taken at Cliveden.

The next two pictures are the final images of this page. They look remarkably similar to images already featured, but they are not. The first is a view of the farthest end of the lake. The final image of this page is ver similar to the first, but is a a closer crop. I was struggling to decide which one to publish to the webpage, so have ended up with both.

-- MikeKiely - 27 May 2006