Day 289 - Evening Light

too much?!

I nearly forgot to blog today, amidst a load of other distracting head stuff, so we went for a stroll down the lane looking for photo-ops in the deepening gloom of dusk.

I managed to catch a surprising variety of interesting (albeit only vaguely) shots...but mainly I learned that it's not that easy to get good shots in low light...or maybe it's just not that easy when you don't know what you're doing?!

Another thing I learned is that you really do need to tweak the photo's afterwards...and this in itself is something of a gamble...sometimes it produces great images, other times it just looks over-processed and a bit rubbish. 

The one above is a crop from a much larger photo, but otherwise doesn't have much processing other than a bit of (admittedly aggressive) contrast...I can't decide whether it's too processed (yeah it probably is...), but I quite like the depth.

This one was taken 10 or 15 minutes later, and the evening had clearly settled in a bit more...

cotton candy sky

This one isn't cropped - I decided to stick with the original framing...now I'm looking at it thinking I should have cropped it...doh!

I have tweaked it a little for contrast and colour...although I don't really know how to do that, so it's a general colour tweak to try to bring out the pink, which was quite vibrant in reality.

no eye deer

This one isn't cropped either, but was the naturally nicest of around ten photo's I took of these autumnal colours on a 5m strip of set-aside (or whatever) down the edge of this field...there was a deer of some type hiding in there, possibly a muntjac, but I didn't manage to get a shot of him.

In any case, the image is still tweaked a little for contrast and colour...and the light is so much better than the previous shot...if only I understood why that is!

new-ish moon

As we turned for home, the waxing crescent moon presented a rare opportunity...invariably when I notice an interesting or even simply a clear view of the moon, the camera is nowhere to be conveniently grabbed...but tonight, it was right there in my hands!

I've tweaked this a smidge to try to bring out some of the detail on the surface, and cropped it down too.  I think the out of focus foliage gives the shot some context...especially as the moon wasn't super bright and detailed.

Finally, a flock of seagulls flew overhead...

flying v

...and not the 80's New Wave band, much to my great relief...nobody needs that.

I think conditions were all wrong for a wildlife shot like this, but I took my chances anyway to see what would happen. 

I've cropped this, adjusted the contrast, and sharpened the image a little too.  

Still not a great photo, I grant.

But, it's a new species for the ongoing Bird Species of South Warwickshire Series, which threads its way back through this blog. 

Nice...

B-)