Landscape Photography - Experimenting with Light

College Project 2013

Stream at Cwmcarn Forest Drive

In this blog I will be displaying sets of images I may or may not be using in my 2013 college project.  I have decided to continue on the topic of experimenting with light in landscapes.  I enjoy taking images of these locations so it seemed an obvious choice.  Here are a few more pictures:

These two images taken at Troed- yr -Rhiw are two of many.  I had just recently bought an ND8 filter

Stream at Troed - yr - Rhiw

On the 18th of September there was a beautiful full moon and I experimented with the shutter speed to create total blackness around the bright white moon.  Unfortunately, I only have a 50mm prime and 15-85 wide angle lens so couldn't quite get as close as I wanted to, and a few came out overexposed with lost detail on the moon.

Below is an image I took of Pen - Y - Fan pond a while ago, after waiting a while for the right moment.  I used a slower shutter speed to capture the most amount of light and to slightly blur the water.  I found a position amongst the reeds where the sun was clearly visible and used a high F-number to have a large range of focus.

This image of a beautiful sunset was captured during one of my stays in Scotland.  Because the water was eerily calm, I positioned myself as close to the water as I could with my tripod, and used a slow enough shutter speed to capture a slight blurring of the water and enough light.  I also used a high F-Stop to not only remove excess depth of field, but to limit the huge amount of light entering the lens.

This is a picture I took during the huge amount of snow we had last Christmas and the beginning of the year.  I saw the tree, alone and contrasting massively to the bright white snow, and decided to use a fast shutter speed to limit the amount of light entering the lens and keep enough to show the differences between blacks and whites in nature.

In this image below of when I visited Scotland again (26th September 2013) I used a slower shutter speed to blur the water more, and because of the intense light from the sunset I had to use an ND8 filter.  I hope to get a much higher filter such as ND400 soon to create far more misty effects on the surface of the water.

The photo below was taken at Cwmcarn Forest Drive at the beginning of September.  I saw the trees lined up, then abruptly stop.  I found this an interesting subject and positioned the camera halfway and took this photograph.

This image below is one of many of the best sunset I have ever witnessed.  The beautiful colours reflected across the water and created a very mysterious, relaxing atmosphere.

During the weekend (25th October - 28th) I will be visiting Iceland and so will hopefully have many images below of the stunning landscapes and natural features in that country.  Iceland has been described as the "photographers paradise", especially for landscapes which is my main topic.  I hope the trip goes well and I have images that I can use in my final project.

I am very happy with the way most of the images turned out of Iceland.  I captured the main attractions from waterfalls to Geysers and I had a few of the northern lights but unfortunately they were blurry.  I wanted to stop and take my time on the images but because we were nearly always on buses I didn't have the time.  I will definitely be using some of these images in my final project.

This set of pictures was taken at Cwmcarn forest Drive during autumn.  I wanted to capture the spontaneity of nature and the colours autumn brings with it.