photography and travel
All photos were taken with the Sony A7R and 28-70mm FE lens. It really does make for a great walk around setup. I’m still experimenting with preparing the photos for uploading as they still don’t look as good as they would look on Flickr, for example. These once are resized to a larger photo (75%), so that I can get an idea of what may look better.
Well, haven’t posted photos for a little while, but I was experiment with Lightroom Mobile yesterday, and finally was able to get syncing working this morning. I had downloaded the Lightroom update for my Mac, but did not seem to able to access it yesterday. My first sync was the photos I took yesterday from our trip to Cambridge. We had clouds and sunshine which make for lovely photos from that very photogenic town.
My walking camera setup as usual was the A7R and 28-70mm lens. These photos were lightly processed from the JPEGs and then resized in Image Bucket Pro. On the Mac, not on my iPad.
We decided to visit both towns, made possible by travelling by train from Knebworth. We were told that Stevenage was not very interesting, but Stephen wanted to visit a small museum there, so we decided to stop there on our way home. Hitchin has many old buildings and does not really appear to have a new area and an ‘old town’. The town centre was interesting, but too many large delivery vans and some renovations happening made it rather difficult to get good photos. The is a large church, which is about a 1,000 years old, and even then the site was used for earlier churches.
We enjoyed walking around and visiting one of the many restaurant/cafes for a meal. We also explored the market, which was close to the church and town square.
Just a few photos from our visit:
Knebworth, England. Processed in FX Photo Studio Pro.
We caught the bus from home, then walked onto the Island which is in the middle of the Swan River. There are supposed to be kangaroos in this section of the island, but there was no sign of them, and we didn’t see any when we visited before either. There is a special double gate to enter to keep the kangaroos in and predators out. The photos were taken about two and a half hours after dawn, and I did some post processing in Photoshop. There were no clouds and the promise of getting very hot, though it was still very pleasant at 8.30 when we headed home.
I still have lots of photos from Yosemite to process. I can’t do much about the composition, so some that I like because I was there may not be worth printing even though there is some beauty in them. This is one that I wanted to work with because of the reflection. I used the RAW this time, working first in Photoshop, then in Intensify. I wanted to see if I could lift the shadows, make the colours richer and deeper (because the RAW is fairly neutral), and introduce some more sharpening. I think this photo is naturally sharper than my favourite one. The lighting was more uniform (less interesting) as well, so the reflection hopefully gives some depth and interest.
This was taken just after sunset at Perth’s iconic Cottesloe Beach, with Indiana’s Restaurant in the background. Although I was a little disappointed in not getting this shot before sunset, I still really like how well my subject stands out from the background, which is nevertheless clear enough for folk who live here to recognise. I added the vignette in Lightroom as I didn’t care for the plain look of the sky.
I took it to Gerry Gibbs Camerahouse today for printing. Bill, the man who handles all things with regard to printing, helped with suggesting sizes and getting rid of a couple of distracting bright lights in the background. You can see the reflection of one of the removed lights just off the beach on the waves. We decided that the light could be coming from anywhere and we wouldn’t try to change it. GBCH have a new process of printing on thin metal sheeting and have examples in their showroom showing just how attractive it looks. It is apparently pretty indestructible and prints can be hung outside, in bathrooms, or used as a splash back in the kitchen. Just wipe over to clean!
For this portrait I chose a matt finish, and for another one from Yosemite have chosen a gloss finish. I’m really looking forward to picking them up at the end of the week to see how they have turned out.