Landscape | alan frost photography

Cley Windmill – decisions, decisions.

I recently uploaded this photo of Cley Windmill to Flickr. A traditional view and treatment of this much photographed and prominent building on the North Norfolk Coast. A relatively pleasing image, well composed I think, but is there anything more to say about it, or just as importantly, could I do more with it in post processing?

When I looked at it again a few days later, I wondered whether or not I should have processed it in another way and that got me thinking. What if I came up with three more versions of the same image using only Silver Efex Pro2, promising myself that I would take no more than five minutes on each version. My plan was to start with one of the many pre-sets and then make some minor adjustments until I finished with an image I liked but had a very different look to the first attempt. What would I learn from this quick experiment? Would I prefer any of the ‘new’ pictures? ….. and finally how would all these photographs compare to the original RAW file from the Leica M Monchrom. Just how flexible are the files it produces?

Looking through the archives – Trees in the crop

From time to time I like to look back through the folders in my Lightroom catalogue and find photographs which have either not been processed, or even if they have, have yet to appear on my blog.

Trees in the crop

One such picture is this photograph of a small group of trees which were surrounded by a growing crop. Taken back in May in the lovely county of Dorset, I stood in the field and with a telephoto lens used the widest aperture opening available to me (f2.8) to throw the foreground out of focus. I wanted the viewers eye to be drawn to the trees and not have the distraction of the everything being in focus. I know that many landscape photographers will use a very small aperture (f16 or more) so that everything is sharp front to back, but the look I was looking for on this occasion, I think warranted a different approach.

Once converted to monochrome, I applied a ‘cream’ tone in Silver Efex Pro to give the image a little more warmth. A treatment I rather like for this type of shot. I hope you agree.

I shall keep looking through the archives as I never know what images I will find!