Photography on your doorstep
11th June 2009
You will learn from this news story two lessons. The first being that you don't have to travel to far away locations to get your images and the second is a small move to the right or left can have on your composition.
The image above is taken form a series of image last week in Trim, Co Meath of Newtown Abbey. With just a short 10 mins drive by car you have a wonderful selection of Castles and Abbeys to photograph. This image the other images below were taken on a lovely sunny evening. The light was just magic. I had a wonderful golden orange setting side lighting sun.
The reason for the trip to Trim was because I got myself a new tripod. My old one has being through the wars, what with sand, salt water etc....... I found a Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod in a store in Dublin that morning. Traveling back home I just knew I had to go out the test it. I collected my camera bags and headed straight for Newtown Abbey.
Now in the last news story I was talking about always look behind you. Well in this case a 1-2 meter move to the right has transformed the composition completely. The image above shows this perfectly. We still have some of the wall but have included the crosses and more of that wonderful sky. In the next image below I moved another meter to the right again but this time a lowered the cameras position to include the grass. The tips of the grass had changed to a different colour and I knew that it would make an interesting foreground when converted to black and white.
So there you have it a 10 minute drive and a couple of steps to the right has made for three wonderful image of Newtown Abbey. Just because you didn't travel for 10 hours on a plane and hiked for hours means you are not able to get yourself some wonderful images. It's the best place to start, your local area. Why ? Well you can visit it at all time of the day and weather conditions and learn to study the different light conditions have for your subject and then arrive when the light is perfect and bag yourself the perfect image. I had packed up the camera gear and was walking back to the car when I noticed this composition below. In this image we have the entrance to the grounds of the Abbey. The path runs along the boundary wall up towards the Abbey itself. As for the tripod, well it passed the test.
The image above is taken form a series of image last week in Trim, Co Meath of Newtown Abbey. With just a short 10 mins drive by car you have a wonderful selection of Castles and Abbeys to photograph. This image the other images below were taken on a lovely sunny evening. The light was just magic. I had a wonderful golden orange setting side lighting sun.
The reason for the trip to Trim was because I got myself a new tripod. My old one has being through the wars, what with sand, salt water etc....... I found a Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod in a store in Dublin that morning. Traveling back home I just knew I had to go out the test it. I collected my camera bags and headed straight for Newtown Abbey.
Now in the last news story I was talking about always look behind you. Well in this case a 1-2 meter move to the right has transformed the composition completely. The image above shows this perfectly. We still have some of the wall but have included the crosses and more of that wonderful sky. In the next image below I moved another meter to the right again but this time a lowered the cameras position to include the grass. The tips of the grass had changed to a different colour and I knew that it would make an interesting foreground when converted to black and white.
So there you have it a 10 minute drive and a couple of steps to the right has made for three wonderful image of Newtown Abbey. Just because you didn't travel for 10 hours on a plane and hiked for hours means you are not able to get yourself some wonderful images. It's the best place to start, your local area. Why ? Well you can visit it at all time of the day and weather conditions and learn to study the different light conditions have for your subject and then arrive when the light is perfect and bag yourself the perfect image. I had packed up the camera gear and was walking back to the car when I noticed this composition below. In this image we have the entrance to the grounds of the Abbey. The path runs along the boundary wall up towards the Abbey itself. As for the tripod, well it passed the test.
