Jake Faulkner's photostream  

As nice as it is to pretend that every shoot goes exactly as planned, and that every photo that I produce is exactly how I intended (or if not, it's even better), sadly that's often not the case. My trip out to Stirling at the weekend is a case in point. I've been mulling over whether to share the photo at all, whether to give any comment on it, or just leave it in the archives and pretend it never happened. However, because I shared a 'sneak preview', I feel I ought to follow that up with something, even if it something I'm vaguely disappointed in. As with all times when things don't go right, I'm going to try to treat this as a learning experience, and do better next time.

So, the picture. It's not actually all that bad, I think. It's just not really what I intended. Part of this is due to less than brilliant planning, part is due to not thinking through the whole process while actually shooting, and part is due to falling into old habits that I'm trying to change. In order:

Planning: I only knew the night before that I'd have the facility to go out to Stirling and shoot - because of where I like to shoot through there, I need a car (it's beyond public transport or realistic walking distance); because I don't have my own, I rely on borrowing one. I'd been told the night before that I could use it, so I came up with going through to Stirling to shoot some sunrise/early morning stuff, but didn't really think it through much more that than. I had some vague ideas I wanted low light over the hills to get contrast (like you see on the left side of the image), but I didn't think through where I'd need to be to get this. Because of that, I hadn't really allowed myself enough time to walk away from the road for more than ten minutes or so (though this particular shot was actually only about a minute from the road).

Thinking through the whole process: while I was shooting I was doing my usual quick look at the histogram of the "correct" exposure to make sure it'd be ok, then also looking at the histograms of the bracketed images if I thought they looked a bit odd. This normally does the trick, but when doing sunrise/set shots like this, I really should have paid more attention to the highlights, as you have much more contrast than in standard lighting. You'll notice the area where the sun's coming up is way blown out, even in this HDR - I should really have made sure I shot at least one image where I have detail in that area. Although I quite like the blown-out look in this kind of shot, it's just too far gone for my liking.
Also, you may notice that there's a difference in the hue of the sky from the left side to the right side of the image. This is because the image is actually made up of four different HDR images, shot vertically. When I was shooting, I was just letting the camera do most of the thinking about exposure, leaving it on aperture priority. Again, this works most of the time, but because of the high contrast in the image, the exposure times for the right side of the shot are much shorter than those on the left. I really needed to take some manual control so I could at least get the sky evened out a bit better.

Finally, old habits: I'd actually intended to go out and shoot for prints, rather than computer screens. I've been shooting most of my images in a 16:9 format for quite a long time now, and it's become second nature for me to compose for that, even when taking multiple shots to blend together later (like in this case). Although my intention this time was to shoot for a photo that would end up in a 5:4 format, I didn't compose for that and ended up with something that just looked wrong like that - either far too much foreground or far too much sky.

Again, I don't actually think this photo turned out too bad, but it's certainly not the photo I had in my mind when I went out to shoot it, which is why I'm disappointed; the fact that I could have got it right if I'd just thought it through properly is the most galling part. Still, it's something I'll do my best to learn from, and hopefully (if you're a shooter yourself) it's given you something to think about too.

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You can find me at www.jakefaulkner.com, on Facebook, and on twitter.

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You can find me at www.jakefaulkner.com, on Facebook, and on twitter.

As a follow-up to my previous photo, here's a shot from slightly before it, in a different format but from the same place.

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You can find me at www.jakefaulkner.com, on Facebook, and on twitter.

On the way home from Dunoon, I was driving along the side of Loch Eck, having difficulty keeping my eyes on the road as it just looked so calm and peaceful. When I saw this bit of land jutting out into the loch, I knew I had to pull over and get a photo.

I scrambled down the bank, and just stood taking it in for a few minutes. It was not long after the sun had gone down, and a mist was just starting to settle over the countryside. There wasn't a breath of wind, and no other traffic around to spoil the atmosphere.

Then out comes the camera, and I sat behind the tripod, trying to capture the peacefulness that I was feeling at that moment. I knew that if I could get it, I would be happy with my day-trip, even if no other photos came out how I wanted.

I'm pretty happy with how this one has turned out.

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You can find me at www.jakefaulkner.com, on Facebook, and on twitter.

Another 22:9 landscape (or does that aspect ratio qualify it as a panorama?)... I'm starting to quite like this shape to work with.
I've also got a version without the lens flare in the lower left corner, but I think I prefer this one.

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You can find me at www.jakefaulkner.com, on Facebook, and on twitter.