Landscape Photography Of The UK by Norfolk Based Photographer Chris Herring
March 8, 2013 Leave a comment
I am running a Facebook competition until the end of March. All you have to do is like my Facebook page and share the competition post to be in with a chance to wind a 50 x 40 cm framed and mounted print of your choice.
The link to the post is below.
February 27, 2013 1 Comment
Male Adder
The Adder is the only venomous snake native to Britain. Photographing reptiles such as Adders requires a slow and controlled approach. Adders often bask in the same spots and if disturbed, whilst out shooting landscapes I have almost trod on a few over the years, however I have found they often come back to the same site after a short wait. Finding an area with a clear uncluttered background is key. Here are a few shots from a Male Adder basking in the Peak District.
Male Adder basking in the Autumn Sunshine
Male Adder at eye level
Getting the adder to stick it’s tounge out took some time, but I was happy I manged three of four shots in the end. All shots here were captured with both a 100-400mm lens plus Extension Tubes and a Canon 100mm macro lens.
February 13, 2013 3 Comments
I always seem to be a bit behind with processing my images by a month or two. Here are a few images captured in December 2012.
Berney Arms Windpump on a frosty morning on the Norfolk Broads
Muscles and rocks at Old Hunstanton with the Hitech 10 stop ND filter
The flat Halvergate Marshes on a frozen morning on the Norfolk Broads
Winterton at first light on the Norfolk Coast
Berney Arms Mill
Christmas lights at Burnham Market in North Norfolk
Berney Arms is hard to reach but it is such a fantastic location to visit, this was shot at first light on a frosty morning.
First light on the beach at Winterton on the Norfolk Coast.
February 8, 2013 2 Comments
My favourite stretch of the Norfolk coastline happens to be one that is often ignored by visitors and photographers alike. This 12 mile stretch of coastline and countryside is rich and diverse offering fantastic potential for photographers. Whilst most landscape photographers head for the North Norfolk Coast to shoot popular locations such as Holkham, Wells or the picturesque Staithes at Brancaster & Blakeney. I love heading to this underrated and much quieter stretch of coastline. Here the Broads and the coast run side by side offer a great deal of variety all just a short distance away.
Winterton
Winterton has a wonderful beach and some wonderful Sand Dunes. It’s great to photograph at first light.
East Sommerton
Just a short distance between Winterton and West Somerton is the tiny cluster of houses at East Somerton. Here there is a derelict church with a giant oak tree growing straight through the middle.
West Somerton
West Somerton has a wonderful example of a traditional flint built Norfolk round towered church.
West Somerton on the Norfolk Broads has a delightful chocolate box staithe with picturesque cottages and small boats.
Horsey Mill
Horsey Mill is great to shoot at last light, particularly in the summer when the boats add that extra bit on interest.
Horsey Gap
Horsey Beach is best known for the hundreds of Seals that have their pups on the beach every year. From November to the end of January its extremley busy with visitors that come to get a glimpse of the pups. At other times of the year it’s a fantastic peaceful beach with great sand dunes and beach patterns for the landscape photographer.
A summer storm out to sea, viewed here from Horsey Beach
Brograve
Brograve is one of the lesser known mills of the Norfolk Broads. Very few boats come down the narrow stretch of water named Waxham New Cut. Beacuse the mill requires a walk of about 45 mins from Horsey Mill or a 20 min walk over the muddy fields a lot of people don’t bother visiting. It’s a wonderful peaceful location and is excellent to see lots of wildlife.
Winter is a great time to capture a sunset behind the mill
Waxham
Waxham beach is located a short walk between Horsey and Sea Palling. It’s a great place to capture the rising sun.
Sea Palling
Sea palling is best known for it’s sea defences that consist of high rocks placed out to sea. These can be see in the distance of this image. The location does have some nice sand dunes and is just a short stroll from the car. Here the beach was captured at dawn on a frosty morning with the sand and dunes coated in a white layer of frost.
Happisburgh
Happisburgh (pronounced as Haze Boro) is a much-loved location with a fantastic picture perfect light house and a beach that is always battered by the sea.
The sea defences at this location make for some fascinating pictures and add an extra element to the scene.
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January 4, 2013 5 Comments
Looking back at 2012 it was certainly a hard year to get out and do as much landscape photography as I would like, especially with our first (and last) child who was born at the end of 2011 . Lot’s of people wrongly assume being a professional landscape photographer photographer you can simply go out and shoot what you want when you want and because of this you can get the best light. The reality is finding time can often be a real challenge. Workshops and commissioned landscape photography left me with probably less than one morning or afternoon a week to get out last year to shoot what I want. So I was certainly more selective with the locations I choose, most being quite close to home.
With commissioned photography shoots I did have the chance to shoot lots of locations I had not shot before. Often with commissioned landscape photography you can be shooting those locations that are less photographic or those locations which are not really shot by many photographers, hence the shortage of material out there and the need for a photographer to be commissioned. Although I must admit I did get the chance to spot one or two really nice locations and I am looking forward to getting back to them for my own photography some time.
The plan for 2013 is certainly to continue being more selective about locations rather than just heading out for the sake of it. I am hoping to get in a few more trips to other locations in the UK this year, if the weather plays ball. And I must remember to shoot more panoramics as they always sell really well, but I am forever leaving the panoramic tripod head at home.
Throughout 2012 I invested in a large format A1 Epson printer which has been a fantastic, albeit expensive to run if you don’t use it lots every day. We also have a family friend who is a picture framer and he trained me up on framing throughout the year and before I know it I had invested in a full framing workshop. This has been great at handling my own orders, especially Christmas which was my busiest yet with framed Print orders. I have also been doing a bit of framing and printing for other photographers I know and will begin offering this service to other photographers over the next month or so. The website is almost built, it just needs a few last finishing touches.
Frosty Edge in the Peak District, UK
Frosty Ramshaw Rocks at First Light, Staffordshire, UK
Tulip Field in the Norfolk Countryside, UK
Standing out in a crowd
Barley At Last Light, Norfolk
Summer Storm at Happisburgh on the Norfolk Coast
More Tulips
Autumn On The Norfolk Broads
Stanage Edge in the Autumn
A frosty dawn at Thetford Forest
Winterton on the Norfolk Coast
One of the last shots I took in 2012 is Berney Arms on a frosty morning on the Norfolk Broads.
December 29, 2012 Leave a comment
Hitech ND Grad Review
The reason landscape photographers use ND Grad filters is that cameras simply cannot record the same level of detail that the human can. When the sun is low in the sky or not yet risen then there is a much wider tonal range for the camera to capture. The filter is toned with a darker area at the top of the filter and a clear area on the bottom half. The darker area is a neutral colour and tones down the exposure over the sky proportion of the scene. This bridges the contrast range between the darker foreground and brighter sky and makes for a more evenly exposed image with good detail and colour in the sky and a lot more detail in the foreground. The above example shows a scene captured without a grad and then a second image captured with a grad filter.
Like many landscape photographers I started with the Cokin filter system. However, I found I was always experiencing the classic problem of the infamous Cokin colour cast. After struggling along with the Cokin system for some time I had heard a few good things about the Hitech system as a good alternative. I quickly invested in an 85mm set of Hitech ND Grads. Immediately I saw a massive difference. I continued using the filters for about a year, then as I upgraded to the wider Canon 17-40mm lens, a move from the 85mm size filters was required. I opted for the Lee filter system, and like most Lee users I have been a happy user ever since.
The move to Lee filters was about 8 years ago now; however I often recommend Hitech filters to my photography workshop participants as they represent a good trade-off between quality and price. The obvious problem with the Lee filters is their higher price. If you are serious about landscape photography and can warrant the cost then the Lee filters are well worth considering. However, for those occasional shooters, or the newcomers to photography who don’t want to fork out around £250 on a filter system, then the Hitech system is well worth looking at.
A few months back Hitech filters generously provided me with a large number of new filter kits and holders for my workshop participants to try out on the courses. I thought it would be really good to try out a few of the filters myself to see how good they really were.
Although Hitech did send me a few of their ten stop filters I haven’t had a good chance to try these out yet so I will report back on this filter at a later date. The filters I am going to look at here are their ND Grads.
First let’s look at the Hitech hardware. Hitech have released a new modular filter holder, like the Lee holder you can add or take away slots and add or remove a 105mm front filter ring for polarising filters. On my own Lee holder I use a 105mm circular polarising filter on the front, this makes rotating the filter much easier. Due to the design of the Hitech holder it’s actually quite easy to just rotate the whole filter holder with a polariser attached to the lens behind, the brass screw on the side of the holder can then be loosened to quickly straighten up the holder. This is hard to explain here, but in practise is actually really quick and easy to do. This makes using a polarising filter behind the Hitech holder really easy to work with.
Adapter rings to attach the holder to the lens come in normal and wide angle versions; the wide angle ones are set back slightly and can help avoid any vignetting.
Hitech offer soft edge, hard edge and reverse densities for their graduated filters. The density relates to how quickly the grad changes from clear to dark. If you are just going for one set and you shoot lots of sunsets, costal scenes or general landscape stuff I would probably opt for the hard grads. When investing in filters I would always avoid the cheaper Chinese sets of filters you can get on ebay, they have a grad area that’s way too soft and these are useless not only for the optical quality of the filter, but because the grad area is difficult to place and the lower part of the sky will not have enough light blocked out.
This stormy afternoon light in the Peak District was captured with a Hitech 0.6 Hard ND Grad
Soft grads can be more difficult and less effective when used on crop cameras, lenses with a smaller diameter and telephoto lenses. Where soft grads can be an advantage is if you shoot in areas where you have an uneven skyline, such as some mountain scenes, cityscapes and woodlands. With my own Lee filters I own both sets of Hard & Soft Grads, however the vast majority of the time it’s the hard grads that get used.
Hard grads are easier to place on the horizon level. One problem when shooting sunsets is the horizion level is normally the brightest area of the scene, but with the soft filter this can actually be the weakest part of the ND area and the sky can easily burn out in this part of the scene. This is less of a problem with ND hard grads as the horizon area of the filter is much darker and because of this it is more effective.
Where the reverse grad comes in to its own is when shooting sunsets or sunrises. A normal grad filter starts by being weakest on the horizon level and strongest at the top of the filter. With a lot of sunset or sunrise scenes the brightest area is obviously around the horizon level. The area of the sky where the filter doesn’t need to be quite so strong is actually the top. The Hitech reverse grad works by being darkest at the horizon level and slightly weaker as it rises to the top of the sky. This is a filter I have wanted for years and am really pleased Hitech have begun producing this one. It’s not going to be required all of the time; however it’s great to keep one or a set in the kit bag for those occasions when it is really useful. I have been trying this filter out for a few weeks now and am already beginning to wonder how I have managed without it for so long.
Left Soft Grad, Middle Hard Grad & Right Reverse Grad
Conclusion
I have been really impressed with the quality of the filters and the colours achieved. I have received no unwanted colour casts, in fact the colours achieved have been very realistic and true. The optical quality of the filter seems excellent with no loss of quality and lens flare has not been a problem at all. I must confess I haven’t shot in a situation where I have needed to stack any filters and this is where any colour casts could suddenly appear. If you do shoot raw then slight colour casts in the sky are probably less of problem now as they once were. Software like Adobe Lghtroom has a grad tool where you can apply adjustments to just the foreground or the sky, including adjusting the white balance / colour on one particular area which is great for correcting any slight colour casts.
A frosty morning in Thetford Forest captured with a Hitech 0.9 Hard ND Grad
If I had to say one negative thing about the filters it would be that I find they can scratch a bit easier than the Lee filters. Most of this seems to have occurred when I have been taking the filters out and putting them back in the plastic wallets, these wallets do feel quite sharp and are quite a tight fit, especially when you have freezing hands. Personally I would house them in a soft filter wallet and not use the plastic pouches they come in. Both Hitech and Lee make such filter wallets and these are ideal to get at your filters nice and quickly whilst also protecting them much better. The black multi filter wallets also double up as an excellent tool to hold at the side of the lens to stop lens flare.
It would be a nice touch to see the more expensive larger size grad filters come in the soft cloth with the three pockets in, similar to how the Lee filters arrive. These can double up as good lens and filter cleaners as they always seem to be to hand and are ideal for this purpose. When shooting in wet weather keeping rain droplets off filters can be problematic. I like the soft pouches the Lee grads come in as you can just put the filter back in the soft pouch and it’s easy to wipe away rain droplets before taking it back out and being ready to shoot again.
All in all I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised with the Hitech filters, they seem so much better than the first set I was using over eight years ago now. I actually prefer the Hitech holder to the Lee holder. Would I change from the Lee filters though? The simple answer is no. With the Lee filters I have never had any problem in eight years of using them. At the larger size 100mm x 150mm (same as Lee), a set of hard grads, a filter holder and a wide angle adaptor is actually not that much cheaper for the Hitech kit compared to the Lee kit. I believe though that Hitech can offer kits consisting of a number of different filters which can result in quite a good saving. Hitech also offer their very own 105mm circular polariser at a good price, although I have no experience of this filter and do not know of any photographers who have used it so I can’t comment on how good it is. It’s also difficult to find any reviews online.
Hitech 0.6 Hard ND Grad used at Winterton on the Norfolk Coast.
I would certainly recommend the Hitech Reverse Grads which I believe Lee don’t offer. These have been fantastic in use, they fit my Lee holder with no problems and I have found myself using this filter all of the time. If I didn’t require the 100mm x 150mm size grads then I would certainly recommend the smaller size Hitech filters as these do represent excellent value for money with a really high quality product. Compared to the Cokin filters it’s a no brainer in my opinion I would go for the Hitech every time.
December 10, 2012 6 Comments
Here are a slection of new images taken in November. All shot in Norfolk, England.
Dramatic early morning colour on a frosty November morning at Thetford Forest
Frosty light at dawn in Thetford, Norfolk
Autumn sunrise over Brettenham Heath, Thetford, Norfolk
Morning sunrise in the Brecks
First light on a frosty morning in the Brecklands, Norfolk
Autumn colours at Rishbeth Wood, Thetford
On the 12thNovember I added a post on my facebook photography page about a dramatic sunset but unfortunately I didnt have a tripod with me. I couldn’t resist stopping for a quick shot anyway and this is the resulting image. The iso had to be pushed up to ISO 1600 and it was raining quite hard when this was taken.
Bacton Wood, Norfolk
Autumn colours in Norfolk, UK
Chris Herring Photography
www.TheUKlandscape.com
Facebook Photography Page
November 30, 2012 5 Comments
Not long after I first got into Digital Photography back in 2003 I suffered a hard drive failure and lost a number of pictures. Back then I never backed anything up, however I did learn my lesson. I now make sure everything is backed up over at least two of three different hard drives and make sure some of my main images are aslo kept off site too.
A couple of the shots that I lost I actually had as low res version online from a photography forum. I was able to copy these so at least I had a low res version. Whilst going through some old files earlier today I stumbled across one of those images so I thought I would post it her. The first image is the one I lost in 2003 and I liked it so much at the time I went back a few times to try to recreate the image. In 2007 I eventually managed an image I was happy with and as it happens, I much prefered the 2nd newer one anyway. The 2nd image has much better stormy and dramatic light where as the original image was prtty flat. The 2nd image was taken on a Canon 5D mk1 and is of wooden groynes at Hunstanton on the Norfolk Coast.
Hunstanton groynes captured on a Canon 300D back in 2003
The same groynes as above taken at a slightly different time of the year with sun further to the left.
November 9, 2012 7 Comments
The Norfolk Broads really comes alive for Photography at this time of the year, with fantastic autumn colours, misty & frosty mornings and the best thing of all is that all the ugly tourist boats have disappeared and it has a wonderful peaceful feel. Below are a few of my favourites taken at this time of the year.
Turf Fen mill with a dramatic sunset on the perfectly still River Ant
Berney Arms rising above the mist filled Halvergate marshes at dawn
The best sunrise I have ever witnessed was this stormy morning on the River Thurne
A frozen Ormesby Little Broard at dawn
Rainbow at first light on the River Ant
A calm afternoon at Horsey Mill on the Norfolk Broads
Reeds at dawn
Sunset at Turf Fen on the Norfolk Broads
Dawn on the Halvergate marshes captured with a tele-photo lens
St Benet’s Mill at last light on a November afternoon
Horsey Mill
Grazing at dawn on a misty morning
One of the older mills that still survive is (Brograve) originally built in 1771
A misty dawn start on the River Thurne
Sailing boats moored on the River Thurne
Turf Fen Mill at sunset
St Benet’s mill on a frosty morning at first light
Chris Herring Photography
www.TheUKlandscape.com
Facebook Photography Page
November 5, 2012 1 Comment
Well it’s Autumn already, this year really seems to have flown by. The summer has been really busy with both workshops and commercial work and I have really struggled to do much landscape photography for myself at all. Luckily I have now finished most of the commissions and it felt really good to get out and do a bit of landscape photography in October, now with the shorter winter days I am hoping to make the most of November and December over the coming weeks.
I had a really good October workshop wise with some fantastic weather for once on both the Peak District and the three day boat workshop. I changed the format of both workshops slightly. For the boat workshop I decided not to head up to Berney Arms Mill, as much as I love this remote location in the previous years when ever we have headed there we have always had rotten weather. I decided to keep the travelling down which made it a much more relaxed weekend. We ended up with perfect conditions photography wise, nice clear nights for star trails, nice light throughout the days and some fantastic stormy sunrises for two mornings in a row. Even I grabbed a quick picture below whilst no one was looking.
For the Peak District weekend workshop the following week it was again a slightly different format to last years, I made the decision to reduce the numbers on this one and stay in a cottage in the village of Tideswell. Using a cottage in Tideswell would mean we were in a fantastic location to quickly reach excellent areas in both the Dark and the White Peak. The smaller group and the cottage ended up working really well and this is the format I have decided to use for next years workshop with a small group of just three or four photographers.
Weather wise we couldn’t have asked for more perfect conditions. The first afternoon we met was a bit overcast, however this ended up working well as we just photographed the nice waterfalls with the autumn colours at Padley Gorge. Day two saw a nice sunrise with a bit of mist on a very cold and windy Mam Tor, the light on Edale and Kinder combined with the Autumn colours made for some fascinating pictures though. Sunset didn’t disappoint either, we headed up to , but walked along the edge until we reached the wonderful autumn trees near the 2nd car park. I have a rule on workshops not to shoot images myself, however the light at sunset was fantastic and even I couldn’t resist two quick shots myself.
Day three saw another fantastic morning, we headed up to Curbar Edge and we were standing above a spectacular cloud inversion, the mist just didn’t budge for hours and there were endless shots to be had here. Eventually we headed back to the cottage for breakfast and a bit of a break before heading back out to the White Peak for an afternoon of shooting picturesque sunny skies and autumn landscapes. Sunset ended up being a strange affair, we were again greeted with a cloud inversion which made for some excellent images initially, but suddenly the cloud thickened a bit too much and called an early halt to the sunset shoot. The final morning we were greeted with light drizzle so I decided to take the group to Chee Dale near Buxton. The overcast light ended up working really well for this location and even though the weather and rain was awful I really liked the shots everyone captured here and am looking forward to heading back in the future to shoot the place myself. Both the boat workshop and the Peak District group were full of fantastic people and certainly made for two really enjoyable weekends, so much so I am actually looking forward to next years already.
Hopefully the winter will be nice and cold this year as I really want to try to do more photography myself in some of the Peak District and Lake Districts more remote location, especially those on higher ground looking down with fantastic views.
