B&W Close to home - making the most of what's nearby

Tobers

Tobers

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Name
Andy
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I love landscape photography. A lot of it is to do with simply being outdoors and exploring new places. There's something really special about being out before dawn and seeing the sun come up. I've always been a bit of a sucker for the "big scenes" such as up in the north west of Scotland, or Iceland, the Faroe Islands etc. but it's simply not practical to do frequent trips to any of these "landscape luxury" locations - if I'm lucky I'll get one a year, if that. The cost, time and travel commitment is just too much.

So, how to scratch the itch? Surrey where I live is devoid of mountains, dramatic coastlines, glaciers and basalt pillars. It's pretty dull from a traditional landscape photography perspective once you've done the expansive view of rolling countryside from the top of Newlands Corner or similar. To be honest I was pretty bored with it and had largely written off finding anything new to photograph in a 10 mile radius. Recently though, I've had a change of heart. Spurred on and inspired by some of the inspiring content to be found at On Landscape and some great photographer friends, I decided to think about things differently and look more closely at somewhere just a couple of miles from home, that I could get to easily and quickly. I decided to focus on a small area of heathland called Whitmoor Common, and try to see it afresh.

I've photographed there before and to be honest it's not very inspiring at first sight. About 1 square mile of boggy, grassy, heathery, flat, lightly wooded Surrey heathland which is pretty dull in the traditional sense of landscape photography. A bit of a challenge then, so I decided to have a go at it. Just for fun, I elected to use very non-standard landscape kit - a Sony A7R with a manual focus Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 lens. Rather longer than the more common wide angle that I'd normally employ. So immediately I was looking for different types of pictures, and trying different techniques. Also, I decided to shoot everything at f/1.2. Why buy an f/1.2 lens and shoot it at f.8? And I'd never need a tripod so that's something else I don't have to carry. The choice of kit was also intended to force myself to pay more attention to composition and shape, and the 3-dimensionality of the imagery. Lastly to get consistency of the final product and make my Flickr stream look pretty, I'm shooting it all in 5x4 portrait orientation and black and white. Whether anyone else likes this odd combination is neither here nor there for me, I like it and I'm having a super time with it.

So, I've now got a nice little project on the go which ticks a lot of boxes. It's nearby, easy to get to in 10 minutes, is challenging to see in a new way, forces me to work at composition and shape, and lets me use cool camera gear. What more could you want? And it's really given me a new focus and enthusiasm which I am hugely enjoying. It's so different from the sports photography that I usually do and it's really helping me to be better at "seeing" pictures.

I'm going to keep at this for a year or so (2 months in so far), popping over there as & when I can, and taking advantage of interesting weather conditions, and see how I get on. If you're a bit stuck in a rut I encourage you to try something similar. Here are some pictures. I'll add more as I go.


X by Tobers, on Flickr


Lone Tree by Tobers, on Flickr


Twisted by Tobers, on Flickr


Dangler by Tobers, on Flickr


Bark by Tobers, on Flickr


Searchlight by Tobers, on Flickr


Vague by Tobers, on Flickr


Misty by Tobers, on Flickr

Thanks for your attention :)
 
Lovely rich tones
Nice variety, the sun through the mist is very ethereal
 
Tobers, you have produced a variety of excellent images of a location that many less-talented photographers would find dreadfully uninspiring. You have a unique style, and I very much like it. I look forward to the other images that you will post.
 
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Great set mate, a long term project is an excellent way to keep getting out. A natural extention to your plan might be a cohesive photo book rather than just a collection of photographs.
 
It's a nice idea and an interesting take on what as you say is a dull subject.

I must take issue with this "why buy a 1.2 lens and shoot at f8". Shooting wide open isn't always suitable for the subject matter and depth of field you may want for your image. I know for my images, it wouldn't work for the bulk of them

Others like the shallow dof look, others don't. Optically F8 will also be bang in the sharp zone for your lens. The images presented work best as a set, and in the B&W processing.
 
ST4 said:
I must take issue with this "why buy a 1.2 lens and shoot at f8". Shooting wide open isn't always suitable for the subject matter and depth of field you may want for your image. I know for my images, it wouldn't work for the bulk of them

Others like the shallow dof look, others don't. Optically F8 will also be bang in the sharp zone for your lens.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but in this case I am purposefully implementing a slightly mysterious, ethereal look to the images by using the wide open aperture. Sharpness is not a consideration. Excuse the flippancy of my initial post.
 
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Enjoyed reading your post, I have the same issue with wildlife, seem to need a holiday up north to find the interesting ... will have to see how/if I can adapt your thinking to my situation :)
 
good on you, great inspiration, I just need to now find a not very inspiring area near me, should not take too long.
 
It's an excellent approach and stirs up creativity. It forces the shooter to 'see'. Good practice if nothing else, and shooting wide open gets interesting results and must present unique challenges. I've shot pets for similar reasons.

I hope the snow arrives.
 
Very creative, well done on making the effort to try something different. I am not going to say I would always want to use that aperture, or even with that shallow depth of field that I would have focussed at the same points you have but that is what makes photography individual, keep it up, bet these would look good in print too.
 
Tobers said:
Indeed, but in this case I am purposefully implementing a slightly mysterious, ethereal look to the images by using the wide open aperture. Sharpness is not a consideration. Excuse the flippancy of my initial post.
Click to expand...


IMO it's worked very well -and I'm not usually a lover of shallow DoF!!! Particularly like "Vague" as a stand alone shot but enjoy the others as a set.
 
Interesting post Andy. It is good illustration that here are excellent landscapes everywhere (and I think we are blessed in the UK in having a great diversity of landscapes in a relatively small area). From your first post 2, 4 and 6 are very good.

Dave
 
Can't think how I've missed this thread.
Gorgeous images.
 
So glad I stumbled across this thread. Wonderful imagery and inspiration. Well done.
 
Great thread, great story and excellent images
 
Its a very nice set and a style that I like a lot. Similar to the likes of Russ Barnes, Matt Botwood and those sort of folk. I totally agree with the comment re apertures. I quite often shoot at larger than normal apertures and I think it works particularly well in misty conditions to add a bit of depth and mood.

Bonny stuff.
 
Eljay said:
Its a very nice set and a style that I like a lot. Similar to the likes of Russ Barnes, Matt Botwood and those sort of folk. I totally agree with the comment re apertures. I quite often shoot at larger than normal apertures and I think it works particularly well in misty conditions to add a bit of depth and mood.

Bonny stuff.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the names of Russ Barnes and Matt Botwood - I always like looking at work from people I haven't seen before. Both have some lovely images especially Matt's. I can see both are working on creating images from quite tricky subjects.

This morning was a super cool, crisp spring sunrise with a touch of mist. Just beautiful. Of course, I found out the hard way that my battery wasn't charged and I had thought to take a spare but decided not to. Amateur mistake! I managed 7 shots, taking one at a time then taking the battery out, warming it up a bit to fool the camera, then shooting another. After each shot the camera just managed to write the image to the card before shutting down.

Such a shame I couldn't exploit the conditions as I'd like, but still, 7 shots is 7 more than I'd have got if I hadn't bothered. Here's 4 of them, and as before the camera is a Sony A7R and the lens is a Canon FD 85 f/1.2 set at f/1.2. The full series is here: http://pictures.tobinators.com/gallery/Whitmoor-Common/G0000qShpOJLDxJw/C0000lAkaiqO.tAk

Path
I0000iUcbiUdtAJw.jpg


Mist
I0000rgiCtUCMc8I.jpg


Dew
I0000zyOyDTrw0qg.jpg


Leaning
I0000kgsqCn39v5w.jpg
 
Lovely images and inspirational technique, must try something similar.
 
psybear said:
Lovely images and inspirational technique, must try something similar.
Click to expand...

Thanks Brian. I'm still going with this and will be for some time. I think I've now worked out a nice theme to tie all these images together, and will continue to shoot over a 1 year period, so I'll be finishing at the end of October this year. The theme will be one of slight and un-obvious human involvement in this landscape. Whenever I go there it tends to be very quiet (unsurprising as I'm usually there very early in the morning) and that's how I like the place. I'm going to see if I can inject a sense of gentle humanity into a small number of these pictures which, in some cases may be hard to detect, and that gets across the feeling I have when I'm there.

In the meantime, here's some more, this time taken when I had both a full battery in the camera and a spare in my pocket, and conditions just happened to be gorgeous. The early bird etc etc...

Flowering
I0000ozLpnkEdNt8.jpg


Why
I0000Rhpuk9R6X_4.jpg


Doomed
I0000q5GEphYLsqM.jpg


Layer
I0000POl6Lb5uhkU.jpg
 
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Thanks Donna. The fun part of this project is trying to work out an interesting way to photograph something that is otherwise a bit nondescript, or which I have walked past 10 times already. I'm having fun with reflections and the sun as you can see, and always on the lookout for interesting weather conditions.
 
I'm still working on this Whitmoor Common project, and have started branching out into some colour pics as well. It's actually getting more challenging as I keep thinking there's nothing left to photograph, but the more I look the more I find. It's very educational and it forces me to look for compositions, details etc much more intently. Here's a few more...

Tall by Tobers, on Flickr

Flocking by Tobers, on Flickr

Tracks by Tobers, on Flickr

Bubbles by Tobers, on Flickr
 
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