Dungeness: Black and White

Back in April I met up with a couple of fellow camera nerds, comrades from the 365 Project, for a trip down to the south coast. We were going to Dungeness, somewhere I had long wanted to photograph. I had looked into going there before but without a car it is prohibitively difficult; public transport doesn't best serve such areas. And they can't really be blamed, its own promotional website describes Dungeness as 'bleak and desolate'. This wasn't what was on our mind, however, as we headed progressively south. The weather was wonderful, one of the first truly beautiful days of the year. Sadly, it didn't last. By the time we had arrived the cloud had solidly set in and the exposed nature of the area left us open to a biting wind that soon left my ears stinging. Undeterred we set off to explore.

Anyone vaguely into landscape photography in the UK will be aware of Dungeness as a location unlike any other in the country. Basically it is an enormous bank of shingle, the largest on the continent. At a glance it is as bleak and desolate as advertised but upon closer inspection there is actually a lot going on. It is a part of a vast nature reserve that is particularly important with regard to bird and plant life, in fact it is home to one third of all the plant species to be found in the UK. There are also two nuclear reactors, Dungeness A and Dungeness B, the first of which has been shut down and the second of which is due to be so in 2018.

Although from a comfort perspective this was not going to be the most wonderful afternoon, from a photographic perspective it was pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for. It was Dungeness at its gloomy best. What little colour there already was had been further muted by the grey clouds and so tones and textures became ever more important. There was always going to be a lot of black and white conversions in post processing after this trip. A little tip, even if you fully intend to end up with black and white pictures it is generally a good idea to originally shoot in colour and then convert to black and white. This gives you a lot more options after the event in what type of black and white you want to apply and, of course, in staying in colour if you so choose.

The main photographic focus are the numerous abandoned fishing boats that sit just above the high tide mark in every imaginable stage of decay. There are a few where it's actually difficult to tell whether the boat has been left for dead or whether it's still a living, breathing boat; and then there are others where all that is left are the ribs of the hull and a few warped planks like the skin on the corpse of a rotting whale corpse. There are also tiny little railway tracks and wheelhouses that, once upon a time, were used to haul the fleet up and down the beach. The tracks can provide leading lines to help guide the eye around a carefully composed image.

I'm going to post a second Dungeness article full of colour images, there were a couple of occasions where having a splash of vibrancy was the right path to take. Our final path led Rachel, Christin and I to a local pub where we could warm up and refresh before the long drive home. I'm very happy that I finally made it down to Dungeness, it was a photographic and social success; I highly recommend it to those with a bleak streak running through them.

The View From St. Paul's

A few months ago my mother came to visit. She wanted to visit St. Paul's cathedral and climb to the summit, and so we went. On that occasion I just took a few snaps on my phone but I returned a few weeks later, awesome annual pass in hand, to try and get some decent clicks with my proper camera. Unfortunately the weather was against me. The photo above has been quite heavily processed to try and make the best of the sky; I've gotten quite lazy and you can see halos (no pun intended) around the buildings on the horizon. I also need to clean my lens and sensor. Below, I've deliberately gone for a silhouette type effect to mask the fact that otherwise it would be quite an underwhelming picture.

Still, I've learnt a lot about the location; I know what sort of shots I want to get, what time of day I need to be there to have the sun at the best angle and, like I said, I have an awesome annual pass and so I'm going to keep going back until the weather is in my favour. God willing.

Quintessentially English

Atop the Captsone

A few weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of giving a friend away. No, not at some sort of charity car boot sale; it was at her wedding. She had had the good judgement to get married at Tunnels Beaches in Ilfracombe, Devon. Not only is it a fantastic venue in which to get married with views out to the Irish Sea and your very own private beach to explore, but the town of Ilfracombe itself is a very picturesque one. Having spent 6 hours on a coach getting there after work I was keen to get out and about the next morning. As luck would have it my hotel was just opposite the Capstone, as locals call it, or as you and I might, the big cliff thing.

Freshly fueled with eggs and bacon I charged up to the top as fast as my little legs could carry me where, at the summit, I was rewarded by fantastic views in all directions. To east and west were views of the coast and cliffs, and to the south all of Ilfracombe was laid out before me. The terrain is hilly and the bulk of the older part of town nestles in a valley running parallel with the coastline; some newer developments have followed the valley as it kinks south. Very little land is wasted, the hills are steep and so many streets are terraced, clinging to the sides of the slopes as the terrain permits. The result is lots of little blind corners, narrow alleys and sudden inclines that frequently put me in mind of the time I spent in south Wales as a child; which shouldn't be so surprising given the two are only separated by 30km or so of water. Indeed, the hotel played Welsh radio in the dining room, which rather threw me as I hadn't undergone the normal mental preparation I would customarily go through before returning there. Also at the peak was the statue in my photo at the top of this post, although I'm afraid I must confess that I have no memory of why it is there or what it represents. I can say that it does a good job of conveying the energy and movement that is so evident atop the cliffs there.

The Landmark Theatre, at bottom left, tends to polarise locals; they either love it or hate it.

My time in Ilfracombe was short but very pleasant. I have been to that part of Devon before and will happily return again in the fullness of time. I don't get to the coast as half as much as I would like which is a shame because the UK is blessed with hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. I must make sure I don't neglect it so in the future.

Lest We Forget....

Pretty much everyone in London must be aware of the various commemorative public art installations that have been happening over the past few weeks to mark the centenary of the First World War beginning. With the passing of Harry Patch in 2009 this conflict did truly become history; he was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of western Europe. It is now only through books, documentaries, films and other second hand sources that we can learn about what is sometimes called The Great War.

I'm not sure a war should ever be called great. Whilst there are certainly circumstances where it is worthwhile to take up arms to defend an ideal or way of life I don't think that we should necessarily glory in it. War should be a last resort, a terrible necessity carried out only to the extent necessary and only when no other option remains. Was the First World War one of these occasions? I honestly don't know. I've read conflicting views on this and am not qualified to make a judgement. I'm not sure that anyone is. I am sure that we must make sure nothing like that ever happens again and that is why installations like this are welcome. Each ceramic poppy in the pictures here, and I have by no means covered them all, represents a fallen soldier. I don't know how many there are, many hundreds of thousands. Too many.

The same as the first picture but original colour

The Lomo Effect

Well it's been a few weeks so I thought I'd better come up with something for the blog and, so, I've investigated the Lomo style of photography and come up with a little guide on how to take a bog standard snap and give it a bit of the old Lomo magic. 

For those of you that haven't heard of it I should probably describe what the Lomo style, or Lomography, actually is. I guess it's actually two things; one of which is easy to define, the other of which isn't. The easy one is the physical look of the photos; there tends to be a vignette (darkening at the corners), the colours are very rich (due to the use of slide film and the common practice of cross processing the negatives) and the quality is generally low with blurriness, poor exposure and even light leaks frequently featuring. Most of these properties, normally avoided at all costs by most photographers but sought out by the lomographer, are down to the very low build quality of the lomo camera. Think 1980s, Russia, plastic.

The element that is more difficult to pin down is the style and composition. Perhaps a good place to start would be with the motto of the movement: Don't Think, Just Shoot. Although it could easily be confused with the motto of the American military it is actually a style encompassed by The Ten Golden Rules of Lomography as laid out on their website. These include such adages as Take Your Camera With You Everywhere You Go, and, Lomography Is Not An Interference In Your Life But A Part Of It. Basically, they try to encourage you to break every traditional rule of photography that ever existed. The Rule of Thirds would be anathema to a lomographer. I highly recommend a look at their site to get more of a feel for this unusual brand of photography; you'll probably either like it or you wont.

The question is: how did such an odd, counter-intuitive and niche movement even get started, nevermind become an international phenomenon? It all started as recently as 1992 when a group of Viennese art students came across an old Lomo camera whilst on a tour in Prague. They found it in an old camera shop and used it in a very casual kind of way, often not aiming, shooting from the hip and generally just mucking about. Upon returning home and developing the film they were charmed by the "unique, colourful and sometimes blurry images" that were produced. Interest amongst friends and family rapidly grew and the following year they founded a society in honour of the strange new camera. The camera in question was a Lomo LC-A Compact Automat, produced some ten years previous in the USSR. The build quality of the device was.... well, there was no build quality; but this leant itself perfectly to the students shooting style.

There was a problem, however; with the fall if the USSR also came the end of the production of the camera and the prospect of a ready supply of the student's new favourite toy. Undaunted, the students flew to St. Petersburg, where the Lomo factory was located, to make a deal for tax breaks so as to make it economically viable to continue production. They successfully got the special permission required from the mayor of the city, a very amiable and friendly chap, one V. Putin. The rest, as they say, is Lomography. Production has since shifted to China and production continues to this day; the future of Lomography seems secure and Lomo cameras remain cheap and affordable for all to try. The film is now the increasingly expensive part.

But what if you don't want to faff about with film and developing and such like and just want to create the same effect using your existing DSLR and a bit of canny processing? Well, I'll show you how - so long as you intend to use Adobe Elements, although many applications are broadly similar these days. Those of you not interested in the technical parts can just skip to the pretty picture at the bottom.

The picture we're going to start with is no great shakes. The exposure isn't great, I should have got my neutral density filters out, the sky is overexposed and there's some lens flare; but as we're aiming for the Lomo style none of this should matter, if anything it'll help. So there are two main things we need to do here; create a vignette and achieve a cross-processing effect by increasing saturation and contrast. There is more than one way to do each of these steps including just clicking through the guided Lomo Camera Effect wizard, but where would the fun be in that?

There are two easy ways to create a vignette. The first is to simply go to Filter>Correct Camera Distortion and use the sliders in the vignette tool, which are normally used to remove a vignette, not to create one. I'd normally go for somewhere around -40 to -50 but it's totally up to you.

The second way is a little more involved but gives you more control. Take the Lasso tool and, having selected a feathering level of, shall we say, between 100-200 pixels, draw a vaguely circular shape in the middle of the photo. Again, we're not aiming for perfection here. We want to alter the outside of this circle not the inside and so you need to click Select>Inverse. Now create a Levels layer and slide both the shadows and the midpoint markers to the right a little, this will add to the vignette effect. I actually prefer to use a combination of these two methods to make my vignettes.

That's the vignette sorted but now we need to work on the distinctive colour palette of lomography; again, there are a couple of ways to go about this and I like to use a combination of each. First up: colour curves. Click on Enhance>Adjust Colour>Adjust Colour Curves... (yes, it really does have the three little dots after it). Here you are presented with a straight diagonal line on a grid. The left hand side of the grid represents dark colours, the left hand side highlights, and the middle is the midtones. There are several preset options available but you can also drag the points on the line to warp it. Moving any given point on the line either up or down will make the corresponding band of colour more or less intense. We want to make the curve look like an S; this will have the effect of making the highlights brighter and the dark parts darker, i.e. increasing contrast. If your line looks something like the one in my example below then you're on the right track. Press okay when you're happy with the effect achieved.

I would also recommend increasing the saturation, this will help to achieve the cross processing effect that is so synonymous with the Lomo style. To do this you can either click on Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation... or simply click on the button with the diagonally divided circle on it on the right hand side and select Hue/Saturation... Use the slider for Saturation to give your colours a bit of a boost. For a 'normal' photo I wouldn't want to push this much past the mid teens, but for the Lomo style you can probably get away with numbers in the 30s, 40s or even higher depending on the photo.

In the same way that you got your Hue/Saturation... layer you can now select a new Brightness/Contrast... layer. Here, I wouldn't say that the Brightness has to go one way or the other, this really depends on what look you want to achieve with any given individual photo, but I would recommend increasing the contrast a little.

Lastly, I would say it's worth while putting a Fill layer in. To do this, select Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Colour... Call the new layer whatever you like or leave it as the default and click Ok. This should default to a layer of pure black and you will completely lose the picture you have so carefully created. Fortunately it is only hiding behind the black layer and we now have to blend the two together to reveal the finished product. Click Ok again. At the top right in the Layers panel you will have a drop down box with various different blending options; I would recommend Soft Light or Hue or Saturation and an Opacity of something like 30-50%. This should really help bring about that cross processing look. Cross processing, by the way, is where you develop film using non-standard chemicals. There are two main film types; standard 35mm and Colour Slide film. Each of these sets has their own chemicals used in their development, C41 for 35mm and E6 for Colour Slide film; however, lomographers noticed that you can get some really cool results if you swap these up. As I understand it the more common option is to use Colour Slide film and process it with 35mm chemicals.

That's about it. With any luck you should now have a photo worthy of the annals of Lomography, or at least something that looks a little old timey; you can see my effort below. None of the techniques I have mentioned here are set in stone; indeed, that would go against the whole freestyle notion that made Lomo popular in the first place. The idea is not to be constricted by the traditional norms, to break the rules and not to worry about the consequences. As Rule #10 of Lomography says: Don't worry about any rules.

The Thames Barrier

Ahhhh, this feels good. Today I did something I haven't done in a long time: I went out with my camera, in the sun, to take photos just for fun. I wasn't doing it because the stupid 365 Project was making its daily demand; nor because I was at some event where tradition demands that a few badly shot pictures of blurry revellers be taken for posterity; nor because I happened to be visiting somewhere that, theoretically, I should be taking photos of. No, today it was just me, the camera, good weather, London and science podcasts. Bliss.

So it was I decided to head down to the Thames Barrier. It's only a few miles from where I live but I had never gone down there before; I soon realised I had been remiss, there were ample opportunities for some interesting photography. 

The Thames Barrier, then. Why is it there? How long has it been there? How does it work? And why does it look so weird? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others. The reason it is in that specific location is quite straightforward; the Thames, if you look at it on a map, is wrigglier than a three year old with ants in their pants but in this little section, between Silvertown in Newham and New Charlton in the borough of Greenwich, the banks are quite straight and parallel to one another; this makes it much easier to build a massive, water tight, movable barrier - the second largest in the world. Also, the underlying chalk bedrock in the area happens to be a little harder than the chalk and clay on which most of London sits and so could support the structure. As an aside, London is steadily sinking into the ground much as Venice is now, but that's a problem for another century. The other interpretation of the question Why is it there? - as in Why do we need it at all? - is also simple enough, if not a little tragic.

In 1953 a spring tide coincided with a severe storm over the North Sea, this led to a surge in sea level of over 5 metres. The first area to be affected was Scotland where 19 fatalities were reported, but conditions only got worse as the surge travelled south into the progressively more shallow waters of the southern North Sea. Approximately 1000km2 of eastern England were flooded with the sea encroaching as much as 2 miles inland in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Over 1600km of coastline was flooded along with severe floods in Silvertown and Canning Town in East London; just a mile down the road from me. The result was tens of thousands being made homeless and 307 deaths. At sea, many trawlers and other boats were lost producing another 224 deaths.

Sadly, by comparison, we had it easy. The Netherlands, where a fifth of the country is below mean sea level and half of it is at less than 1m above sea level, over 1800 people were drowned as a quarter of the country was lost to the sea. There were also long term effects as being flooded by sea water is not like being flooded by fresh water. Having that much salt dumped onto the land devastates farm land or, indeed, any land where you might want vegetation to thrive.

As a result of this natural disaster, the second worst in British recorded history, the Government began planning how to protect us from such 1 in 1000 year catastrophes. Sea defences around the country were built/bolstered and a plan for some kind of barrier to protect central London was commissioned.

The design was first drawn up in the 1950s by Charles Draper but construction didn't begin until 1974; it was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on my 1st birthday in 1984 and, in today's money, it cost nearly £2b. There are five large piers and two smaller ones creating four 60m navigable spans and two 30m navigable spans. The 60m spans were specifically that size so as to be the same as Tower Bridge, i.e. anything that could get through Tower Bridge had to be able to get through the barrier too. I think my photos struggle to convey the scale of this area adequately; the river is over half a kilometre wide here, and you could fit Tower Bridge onto it four times just in the central section. It's huge.

Used with permission

So how does the damn thing work? Hopefully the diagram to the right will help explain. Between each pier there is a hollow gate with a circular cross section; when the gates are closed this rests in a depression cut into the riverbed  allowing the free flow of water. To stop the fluvial flow these can be rotated such that nothing pass. To close the barrier isn't a simple task, though, it requires coordination with many other flood defences in the region and costs about £16000 per go.

The Barrier can protect London in two different ways depending on which direction the flooding is expected: from the North Sea or from the river itself. It's easy enough to imagine how it might protect London from the type of disaster experienced in 1953, you simply close the gate and, with any luck, nothing will get passed it and the areas down stream won't be too badly damaged either. But it can also help if there has been a lot of rain and the flooding is coming from upriver in the Thames basin. It does this by closing the gates during a low tide, this means that once the tide starts rising again it can't get back up river and this creates a basin of low level water that the flood water can run into allowing it to drain out of the city more quickly.

As it approaches it's 30th birthday the Thames Barrier continues to provide protection for Londoners; disconcertingly, though, this protection is having to be deployed more and more frequently. In it's first 6 years of use it was only closed 4 times, in the last decade it has averaged 7 times per year. Is this a possible measure of global warming? Are flood events occurring more often? In the fantastically complex science of climate change it isn't possible to draw a conclusion from one measure of anything, but it would seem to support that. The barrier was only designed to protect against a surge in sea level of 4.67 metres. If sea levels raise by a metre this century, as seems likely, then the capacity of the barrier to protect the capital would be greatly reduced. Add to that the slightly odd fact that Britain is tilting (the south and east are sinking and the north and west are rising at about 5cm/century) and the future looks ever more precarious. The original design was supposed to provide solid protection up until the year 2030 followed by a period of ever diminishing returns after that. The Environment Agency, however, who now runs the barrier, has said that it has no intention of replacing it before the year 2070. I do wonder if this is based on good scientific advice or on Governments that are not willing to spend money on insurance policies. Hopefully it won't take another disaster of the kind seen in 1953 to force their hand.

The view to the west, Docklands and the O2 can be seen in the distance

After three hours I had only covered about 200 yards of the riverbank but I had had a great time. The weather and light were fantastic and it was good to be there knowing that I could write it up at my leisure in the style that I used to before the 365 Project consumed my hobby. I knew I would have the time to look into the history of this impressive structure and do it some justice in words as well as in pictures. Basically, I have my blog back and I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Review of 2013....

Soooooooo, it has been rather a long time since my last post. This has been due to a number of reasons, partly laziness, partly lack of inspiration and frustration with the 365 Project, and partly because I have been in Romania for the last 3 weeks and internet connections there were few and far between. I will finish off the 365 Project, I have a bunch of photos on the back burner that I need to process and get written up and I will try to have that done by the end of the month. For now, I'm going to do one of those lazy Review of the Year posts with some of my favourite pictures from 2013. I won't include any from the period I haven't posted yet, you'll just have to be patient for those.

In 2014 I will be going back to my usual format of a post every fortnight or so. I think this gives me time to get some decent photos together and the words to go with them. I think the daily requirement of the 365 Project ultimately lowered the quality of what I do here, which was one of the reasons I became increasingly disenchanted with it. However, this does not foreshadow the year ahead, I am optimistic and enthusiastic about the blog for 2014. I have had 70,000 hits so far which is orders of magnitude more than I ever expected and so thank you to everyone who takes time out of their day to see what I've been up to. I'll try to raise the bar.

The last 12 months have been the most traumatic and difficult of my life, much of it self-inflicted, but there were certainly some good times too. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me this far.

Gargoyle from inside the Natural History Museum, January.

View from Westminster Bridge, January.

Chain in Vienna, March.

St. Marco's piazza, Venice, March.

Venice, March. 

 

Parliament Square, London, May.

Pocketwatch, May.

Parliament Square, London, May.

 Dead flower, July.

 Olympic Park, September.

365 Project: Photo 354

The journey continues....

Germany whizzed by at a great rate of knots but unfortunately we had a little more trouble once we got into Austria. It turns out the driver didn't know how to use the sat nav properly and he had merely plugged in the final destination and let the device do the rest. This is one of my major bug bears with sat navs, they stop people thinking. The mistake he made was to say that he wanted to avoid toll roads, this meant that instead of cruising along the E60 motorway avoiding the mountains we ended up snaking our way through mountainous back roads in the middle of the night. Along with the fog and the constant blind turns you might be forgiven for thinking that what you shouldn't do is drive in the middle of the road. This, apparently, is the safest way to negotiate such a route but having had to swerve back onto our own side of the road a few times I found myself strongly disagreeing with this philosophy.

After a couple of hours of this meandering at 20-30mph we eventually stopped for fuel at which point I leapt out of the car and bought an atlas. I eventually managed to pin down where we were and led us back to the E60 but the whole time the sat nav was forever telling us to get off the road. I insisted on being given the wretched thing and reprogrammed it, properly this time, and we soon made good progress through the rest of the country. Dawn brought Hungary which whizzed passed without mishap.

Since getting off the ferry in France the borders between each country have been non-existent. If you didn't keep an eye out for the sign announcing the frontier then you would never know you had passed into another country. There were no barriers or gates, no tolls or customs and no need for anything as archaic as a passport.

All that changed when we got to Romania, however. All of a sudden everything ground to a halt. Perhaps because they only get one car all day to look over the border guards decided that they would make the event last as long as possible. I wouldn't have expected three Romanians and an Englishman to have too much difficulty getting into Romania, but there were questions aplenty and the need to go to the little hut off to one side to pay the 'tax'. Once we were finally on our way again the going was a lot slower than it had been previously. Beautiful, slick, black tarmac gave way to pitted, gravelly tracks. As we crossed a wide, flat plateaux dotted with villages and farmsteads the difference in  affluence between the people of Hungary and Romania was stark.

As I look back the main images I have of that area are of a dead dog in the middle of the road, frozen stiff and entrails being picked at by crows; and an old man (I almost want to say 'peasant') sat on a crate at the roadside selling some home grown vegetables on a blanket. It's fair to say none of the produce at hand would have passed the QC of a British supermarket. The people here were dirt poor and I feared that all of the worst stereotypes that many of us will have of Romania were true after all. As we progressed, slowly, we got to the city of Timsoara which, happily, looked like any other city; although the undercurrent of poverty never completely faded.

This picture was taken by Georgiana as I slept. We had eventually come across a good road that should have shuttled us down to the capital, Bucurest, but it appeared to be closed. The third and final fuck up of the journey was when it was decided that instead of following alongside the main road on smaller roads for a while and then joining it later, we started ascending the Transalpine road. This felt a lot like climbing into Narnia. The road was frozen, the trees were frozen, waterfalls were frozen; everything was white, cold and hard. After nearly thirty hours of non-stop driving I didn't feel that this was the best way forward; the road was single track, the tyres we had were completely unsuitable, the driver was exhausted, and the place was completely deserted. It could have gone very badly wrong. I was, however, overruled. I was so pissed off about this that I decided to try to sleep my way through it.

365 Project: Photo 353

Finally! We're back on the road! This was sunset as seen from a German autobahn. Our unplanned and lengthy stay in Brussels ended at lunchtime today when we picked the car up from the garage. Unfortunately/stupidly we had a bit of a run in on Saturday night on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. Our driver hadn't noticed that the turn at the top of the slip road we were leaving the motorway by was a right angle. He valiantly tried to make the turn anyway, at 60mph, but failed. We mounted the curb destroying the tyre and the wheel and damaging the suspension. This was at about 2am and, would you believe it, there wasn't a local garage just waiting to fix it for us. I won't go into details here but two and a half days later we're back on the road. Only 30 hours of driving to go!!

365 Project: Photo 336

The view from the train back down to London. I love the flat landscapes of east Anglia.

365 Project: Photo 316

The theme today is Simple Pleasures. This is one of the gateways into Russell Square where I come to sit and read my book every lunchtime. A simple pleasure.

365 Project: Photo 301

I took this one out of the window of a bus on my phone and then HDR'd it up a bit.

365 Project: Photo 297

Sunset in the Olympic village.

365 Project: Photo 295

A night out with workmates inevitably ends with me going for a walk along the river. Conveniently, the theme was Dark. This was taken on my phone, when drunk, from the Millennium bridge. The bright star above the moon is, in fact, Jupiter.

365 Project: Photo 293

This reflection caught my eye as I entered Stratford underground station today. The theme today, which I generally ignore, was Something Beginning With P; well, there are clearly some pigeons at the bottom of the picture there.

365 Project: Photo 292

As I was walking to work today I looked back the way I had come and saw the sunlight behind this tree. I've done a poor job of capturing it but I remember rather liking the look of it in the flesh.

365 Project: Photo 288

A pleasant sunset stroll along Hampstead Heath, my first visit there in a very long time. Taken on my phone and cropped, hence the graininess.

365 Project: Photo 284

Yesterday I played around with the tilt shift effect on SnapSeed and today I've been using the new HDR effect they have recently added to it. I'm still undecided about HDR. I think that, in general, people over do it; although I have seen some fantastic examples of the genre I suspect the amount of effort that needs to be put in to do it 'properly' makes it not worth the hassle. Here, I've tried not to overcook it too much. If anything, though, there is a more distracting element to the picture that I can't get passed. To me it looks like the left side is the near side of the Eye and the right one is furthest away, which isn't the case. I find it incredibly distracting.

365 Project: Photo 283

I was waiting about on the steps in front of Stratford Station and remembered that I had been on the look out for somewhere with a bit of height to try out some tilt shift shots. Sadly, I don't actually have a tilt shift lens to properly achieve the effect but most apps these days seem to be able to apply a blur filter in such a way as to give the miniaturising effect for which tilt shift is famous. I did this using SnapSeed, my phone editing app of choice.

365 Project: Photo 282

Not an awful lot to say about this one. I was walking passed Cardiff City Hall and took a snap.