April divided itself neatly into quarters: one week to recover from the previous month’s skiing and start to process those photos, one week in the Lake District, one week on Anglesey, and one week at the end to collapse and go through everything.
My ski trip to Flaine, France properly finished on the first of the month, with the bus ride out of the resort and flight home. It had been snowing hard the whole previous evening and overnight, meaning that the trees and buildings which filled the valleys looked to be pulled straight from Christmas cards.
My week in the Lake District was spent in the area around Keswick, with daily walks and hikes into the surrounding hills. The weather was almost ideal for this, despite some rain and high winds, but the changing conditions bought a variety of interesting and photogenic cloud formations, which I made full use of in my landscapes. I found that many of my images had overriding blue tones, yet retained an overall feeling of warmth, which was quite pleasing.
The area was full of wildlife, with herds of cattle, sheep with their lambs (below), and even alpacas, but I was most captivated by the pheasants. The colours of their plumage, especially when caught by the sun, were incredibly vibrant and eye-catching. The picture on the right was a very lucky shot, taken in the split second after I spotted the bird waiting there, and before it disappeared completely into the bushes. If autofocus had missed…well, I would have been very disappointed.
I tried particularly to take advantage of the long views available, catching broad scenes with my short (18 – 55 mm) lens. When I was close to the shore of Derwent Water, it meant that views were laid out for me across the lake, and climbs of local fells gave me a birds-eye view of much of the surroundings, as shown in the panorama below.
Deliberately capturing so much sky, however, posed its own challenges, as it was far lighter than the landscape. Each of the above images showcase different approaches to getting an even lighting balance. The left uses the rule of underexposing rather than overexposing, and some post-processing tweaks of shadows and highlights, to strike quite a good balance. The right accepts that what little foreground there is will be dark, and has deepened shadows to create a cut-out silhouette. However, that image also has room for improvement. The landscape at the bottom is very uneven, with the tallest point being almost in the middle of the picture, and the details in the clouds themselves have been slightly over-processed by myself in lightroom.
On my final morning, Derwent Water was extremely calm and almost glassy, offering some brilliant reflections of the surroundings, as well as the moored boats. For the photo on the left, I made use of some natural framing offered by a tree at the water’s edge, breaking up the edge of the frame and creating a sort of ‘peering through’ effect which draws the viewer in. The two images below were designed to make the most of the complete reflections of the subjects- the island in the left picture, and the whole hill system and foreground islands on the right. The light breeze means that they’re not quite to the ‘turn it upside down and you wouldn’t notice’ standard, but still very pleasing, particularly with some increased saturation and vibrance to restore colour reality.
My time on Anglesey was more defined by capturing interesting compositions than practicing the technical aspects of photography. The weather was my main obstacle, being very variable over the week, and, on one day, providing visibility of only fifteen feet. Most challenging for capturing the wide, rolling valleys of North Wales!
Those two extremes of visibility are demonstrated admirably by this pair of photos, taken at either end of the week. On the left, I was struggling to bring the base of the cliffs into focus, just tens of feet away, due to a thick blanket of fog. On the right, although it may not initially appear so, this was taken from the other side of Cwm Idwal, focusing on the people climbing the famous slabs. How many climbers can you spot?
On days when the weather allowed, there were certainly some beautiful landscapes available to work with. From wide beaches and coves in the north of the island, to the blue hills of the Menai Strait, all the way to the Miner’s Track leading to Yr Wyddfa, in Eryri National Park.
All of these photos were taken with my short lens, which got a lot of exercise on this trip, being able to give me the shortest focal length and widest field of view. With all of my subjects being at a fair distance, the slight distortion which I sometimes notice on things at close-range was avoided, giving me great scenes with very little fish-eye.
Wildlife came in all shapes and sizes, though admittedly mostly sheep. However, I did meet the occasional other person- or, in the case of the windsurfer on the left, admire them from afar. This person struck me particularly because of their companionship with their dog, who followed them faithfully as they surfed up and down the shore. I also met the occasional herd of nomadic long-horned goats, shown below, who thankfully ignored my presence entirely.
Crossing the tidal causeway to Llandwyn Island opened up its small set of tracks, leading to some ruined chapels, several small, sandy bays hewn from the dark grey rock, and a pair of disused lighthouses, both of which are now tourist attractions. The composition of the photo on the left was a very lucky find, as I didn’t have to grade the colours in post-processing to achieve the monochrome effect. Conversely, the colours in the middle picture were naturally very varied, with a wonderful contrast between the yellow algae and purple thrift. The long view to the larger lighthouse is a shot I’m happy with, as it clearly shows the building’s precarious position on the clifftop. Sadly, it seems as though its days there may be numbered.
Finally, a perspective shot of Cwm Idwal which I was very happy to have achieved. If I’d put my camera that close to the surface of the lake and it hadn’t come out, all my anxiety would have been for nothing! As I didn’t have a polariser with me, I was also excited to have avoided the opacity in the surface of the water, purely by the low angle and quality of the light.
I was so busy with my travel and post-processing in this month that there are literally no surplus shots whatsoever. Thankfully, though, it left me fully rested and ready to go for a busy time next month!