Monochrome Competition

Just got back from the camera club where we had a Photoshop evening where one of the members showed us how to add a sky to a photograph that has a bland white sky. It was quite interesting in showing a different method of doing this to what I'd seen before. The thing with Photoshop is that there's lots of ways of doing things and everyone has their own favourite. There was supposed to hav been another presenter but he didn't turn up so we got finished early.

The other thing tonight was to hand in the monochrome competition entries. Here are mine:


Lynne, Emma & Evey out for a walk

A couple that I met on the Pennine way at Black Hill trig point near Holme Moss television mast.


Check Mate

Sunrise over Broadstones

Got up really early again this morning to try and get some decent sunrise photos but again it didn't quite get there. As usual the sunrise started off looking promising but then there was just too much cloud as the sun got over the horizon. There was a great sunrise on Thursday morning but I had to go to work. I did have a disposable camera on me on Thursday morning so I took a slight detour but I don't know how they will turn out because I have to wait to fill the roll before I take it to be developed (it's a camera club competition in January).

After the sun came up I went home for breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon collection leaves from the garden. My compost heap is now stacked up about 4 feet above the top. Unfortunately the leaves are wet otherwise I'd set them on fire to try and reduce the bulk. After that I went back out and took a few more church photos at Kirkburton and Shelley and then it started getting dark so I went up to a bridle path above New Mill and made some sunset photos. Unfortunately I hadn't anticipated being out so late so I didn't have my tripod. I haven't had time to look at them yet but I might post some of them to the blog later in the week.

Anyhow here's some of the best photos from this morning. As usual double clicking on them will bring up a bigger view.

Open Print Competition Judging

At the camera club tonight the Open Print Competition was judged by Colin Gower from the Huddersfield Camera Club. I didn't have anything in this competition because I haven't got around to mounting prints as yet. I guess I need to make a start on mounting prints so I can get a bit of expert feedback.

The judging was quite interesting and I agreed most of the time with the judges comments but not as often with the scoring. All the prints are marked out of 20 and this judge was very generous with his lowest scores being 14 and 3 prints receiving full marks. Of course it's all very subjective but some of the prints given good comments received low marks whilst others given a lot of criticism about composition and technical achievement received high marks. Maybe I'm missing something?

As usual some of the prints have been seen before and even the judge commented that he'd seen some of the prints previously in a digital competition. I'm still finding it hard to understand why people would want to continuously bring back the same images, for me it would defeat the objective of taking part to learn. Although I suppose it's quite time consuming to prepare prints in the mounts and so re-using them is making the best use of them. I guess I'll find out when I start mounting my own prints.

The next two competitions are both digital so I will most likely enter them. Next week I need to enter 3 black and white photographs and then the following week is architecture so I better get busy.

Another Wet Weekend continued

Sunday morning the sun shone for about an hour and then the rain came over again. I was getting a bit bored but I couldn't be bothered to go and get some new leaves to scan. In the end I decided to put some warm clothes on and visit the local wind farm in the rain. I need to make some black and white digital photos for next Monday to enter into the Camera Club Competition and I thought there may be something I could use. A lot of the members seem to drag photos from their archives for the competitions but I prefer to take something new if possible. After all my main purpose in going to the club is to improve my photography so theoretically my latest photos should be my best. Anyway even if they aren't it forces me to go out and try to get something new and keep on practicing.

The windmills are at Royd Moor about 2 miles from my house. I've taken a lot of photos of them before and will probably post a gallery of them on my main web site at some time. When I got there it wasn't raining much but it didn't stay like that for long and then it stopped again for a while. I made my way around to the other side of them and also took some photos of the surrounding area before going home to dry out.

To make things a bit more challenging I took only a fixed length (50mm) lens so I had to zoom with my feet or crop the photos later. I also converted a few to Black and white to see if they were suitable for the competition.

First photo of six windmills nearest to the road.
Second photo cropped square and converted to black and whiteThird photo showing some of the second row of windmills
Next a landscape photoshoeing most of the twelve windmills
As I got closer the weather started to roll in and the windmills in the background are being obscured by clouds


A bit later after the rain had passed over, this is the second row of winmills from the other end near the observation point.
Windmills from the observation point
All twelve windmills converted to black and white
A muddy lane looking ou towards Penistone
Looking over windmill reservoir at Ingbirchworth with Emley Moor television mast in the background.
Taken from a field behind the windmills
Looking down onto Royd Moor reservoir in the foreground and Scout Dyke reservoir in the background. The Windmill reservoir on previous panorama is just to the left from here.
Finally when I got home Evey dog had arrived and was trying to sleep on my clean suite. I don't think she was too happy with me keep taking photos of her with the flash.

Another Wet Weekend

I've finally got around to moving my Blog from my main web site to Blogger because it's so much easier and so I will blog more often. When I made changes to my old blog I ended up having to re-publish my whole site which was taking longer and longer every time. I will change my main web site to contain just my main galleries and put links in this blog instead.

So another wet weekend and I've not had much opportunity to get out and make many new photos. It's a pity really because the leaves on the trees at this time of year have a lot of vivid colours which can light up beautifully when the sun shines. But I did pick up a few leaves in the garden with the intention of scanning them and making something artistic with them. They were all a bit wet but I started to scan them in and then the wife dragged me out to get her dad a new chair. The leaves got left in the study and by the time I got back to them they had dried out and got a bit crinkly so weren't much good. But here's a few of the ones I did.