Photography: Calendar photos

I need some photos for a waterways calendar competition, so I was out in the freezing cold on Sunday taking photos of the canals. The sun came out a little for this one, but there were still dark clouds. It’s a nice picture, but is it good enough for a calendar? I would have preferred more light and camera shake is also a problem when it’s that cold. You shiver!

I brightened this one up by adding contrast, but perhaps I overdid it?

I shot all these pictures using aperture priority and the camera set the speed. The speed was 1/300 second for most of them. This one was shot into the sun and the extra light tricked the camera into increasing the speed to 1/3000 second. So it came out too dark. I made it lighter in editing. I quite like it.

I put some photos on Facebook and this was the most popular one, so it will probably be one I’ll enter in the competition.

I like this shot too. It’s best to select a wide aperture for landscape photos because it gives depth of field. More of the photo is in focus. For these pictures a wide aperture would have meant a slower speed and it was freezing. I had to compromise. You can see that this side of the bridge is more in focus than the other side. I can make out the brickwork on the other side of the bridge so it was a good compromise. The trees look out of focus, but they weren’t the subject so it works quite well. It was a difficult spot to take a picture, but in some places using a tripod would give clearer, more in focus pictures. It was really too windy for a tripod though. You can’t win in winter! I do have photos that are different from the pretty summer pictures that have already been entered though. It’s a calendar, they need photos from all the seasons.

You can choose your favourite picture and tell me in the comments box. You can also follow me on Twitter.

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