End of winter #photography

Living in the middle of the Black Country means the roads are always busy, so I like to go out to take photos on a Sunday. Being in the shadow of the Welsh hills means we get a lot of rain too. It rained again on Sunday!

You can see in this photo that the colour of the water is the same as the sky, very dark. When you’re doing landscape photography the colour of the sky affects your whole picture. You can still get some interesting pictures though.

This picture isn’t a typical landscape. I increased the ISO and used a wide aperture (f/4) which brought out the detail and bark on the trees. Behind the trees is out of focus, I lost the depth of field we usually try for in landscape photography, but I think it worked.

I used a wide aperture for this one too. It almost looks 3D with the background a little blurred. For this shot you need to be farther from your subject and focus on the tree on the right, rather than the one closest to us. You get the two trees in focus or more in focus than the rest of the shot.

I took this picture last week when the light was much better. Again I used a wide aperture, but this time I was using my 50-300 mm lens and I zoomed in close. I have the geese in the forground as my subject and in focus and the background out of focus. It makes for an interesting picture.

Here I was using a single focus point and had it in the middle of my frame and on the goose at the back flapping his wings. It puts that goose in focus and the foreground and background out of focus. You can even make some things in the foreground  disappear with focusing like that.

 

Getting your focus point on the smaller birds is harder, especially when the keep moving. Incidentally, I used CF (continuous focusing) for these shots, because my subjects did keep moving around.

The spring is nearly here in the UK and I hope to get better shots and landscapes. I’ll also be photographing events; the fun days, craft fairs and the carnival.

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