The Tree on the Hill - Black and Whte

This is yet another shot that made me wish I had my DSLR with me. The smartphone hasn't done a bad job but it is easy to see the limitations of the lens and sensor straight away.

Fortunately I shall be back that way in the next couple of months and I won''t have any luggage problems that will prevent me from taking a full bag of camera kit with me.

As I've said before, I treat these smartphone shots like planning shots. It is easier to run around and get lots of shots with a basic camera or a smartphone and the lack of options forces you to think about the composition more. Then you can go back later and spend some time on the shots you liked most and get a good capture.

Ploughed Field with Old Colour Treatment

I took this picture of a field that had been half ploughed just the other day. However I wanted to try a treatment that made it look a little older.

There of lots of aged looks you can go for from monochrome and sepia toned images replete with blurring and vignetting etc. through to 70s and 80s style treatments that have recently become popular on Instagram.

The rural nature of the shot put me in mind of the USA in the first half of the 20th century. I was thinking of some of the recoloured black and white shots from the Depression and early colour shots of farmers and their tractors.

This photo is a mixture of ideas so it doesn't replicate just one style but I like to think that the modern photo with old colouring gives a sense of the continuity of the earth and nature.

Smartphone photos in Black and White

Carrying a smartphone with a reasonable camera has meant that I can take shots when I'm out and about. The quality is nowhere near as good as an SLR and the number of options available to me are very limited but it does provide a great way record photo ideas for later.

Then, if I like the results, I can come back with proper kit and a plan and take a better quality shot.

The original photo in colour was nothing to write home about but there was something about these lobster pots that caught my eye. The whole scene was shouting old timey black and white photo to me.

Unfortunately as soon as you start processing these smartphone photos you start losing detail. It's most obvious in the sky. Also, not having a variable aperture lens I've had to crudely blue the background in an image editor.

However, as a process it has given me lots of ideas for how to take and process a higher quality version with an SLR camera. I think of this as being a quick and easy trial run. 

Whitby Harbour with Split Tone Effect

This started off as a decidedly average colour photo of the harbour walls in Whitby, North Yorkshire.

Astute readers of this blog may have noticed that often the image editing techniques I use are intended to rescue a poor or uninspiring photo.

I converted this to black and white and then used a split tone effect to add the colours. It uses a yellow to blue gradient which resulted in the sunset like sky.

The processing took away some of the detail as you can see on the edges of the lighthouse but it works well enough for a postcard sized print.

Another stone in the wall

This is a dry stone wall on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. I was first attracted to it by the many interesting shapes of rock that went into building quite a uniform structure. However, once I got the image on my computer and I looked at it more closely I became aware of the huge variety of hues and shades that made up what I thought was just a grey stone wall.

I've tweaked the colours slightly to make the contrast more obvious but not by much. I'm not sure what type of stone this is (any help gratefully received) but it is used a lot in the area for functional structures. The houses tend to be made of a much lighter and yellower stone that doesn't appear to be the soft sandstone I've seen in the South.

This image (and a number of others) is available as a set of postcards from Zazzle.

Steps up to field on the North Yorkshire Moors

These steps caught my eye because you don't usually see steps into a field. To me they look like they should go up to a little stone cottage but there is no sign of there ever being a building here.

The clue might be iron fence that was often used to mark the edges of country estates. There are a couple of estates near by that this land might have once belonged to. It is always possible that this gate was for a footpath that crosses the estate.