Lockdown Photography

Easter Hares

I hope, under the current circumstances, this finds you all well.  I also hope that you are able to still get out and enjoy the natural world either from the comfort of your back garden or during your permitted daily exercise.

Amongst some of the positives under lockdown (e.g less pollution), perhaps getting out and learning your local patch stands out as being fairly high on my list, at least from a photography point of view anyway.  After a few failed attempts, I've found Hares, Grey Partridge and Little Owl all much closer to home than I ever realised.  Within 10 minutes from the village.  Most of my photos have been of the Hares: the Little Owls and Partridges have been very wary and distant, but I know where to go looking when restrictions ease!

On the topic of restrictions, I want to be clear I haven't been going and sitting for long periods with my camera, rather my camera has merely accompanied me on my walks across the local fields on public footpaths.

At this point, the Hare had clocked me and paused to assess whether I was a threat before resuming the chase

Isn't it remarkable how Hare can just vanish in such a flat field by simply lying down!  It can be quite frustrating as I walk through a field and think, "no Hares today".... Then turn around and they're all running about behind me!  One evening, I was walking along a footpath and noticed a little mound up ahead...  I didn't remember seeing it the last time I was up here.  Looking through my binoculars, I could see it was a Hare.  I got down low and tried to frame it up against the sky but nothing quite worked.  Until another one came over the crest of the hill and they went running around together (as you can see above).  The sky was popping pinks and oranges as the sun was going down.  Magical.  In the low light, I only really had the option of silhouettes but I think it worked out alright.

The Hares then began running towards me down the track before darting through a hedgerow and into the next field.  I was still lying down at this point when I looked to the right to see one of the Hares had realised there was a weird shape that wasn't there a few minutes ago.  I rolled and managed to fire a couple of shots before the two Hares resumed their game of chase and disappeared.

I've also been exploring some of the back country lanes around Rutland and I have to say they are beautiful!  With Spring springing, the verges and hedgerows have changed from the winter browns to vibrant greens, blues, pinks and yellows of the new foliage and wildflowers.  One of my favourites, Red Campion, has been flowering for a week or two now and I found a huge patch of it a few days ago.  I was trying to find which plant to photograph before settling on this one...

Red Campion

It has also been a great time to hunt through those old photos on the hard drives and see what's lurking.  Those ones you didn't see any potential in at the time.  The ones you thought looked amazing in person but when you got it home and looked on the computer, you couldn't figure how to edit them.  I found a couple of those recently.  Sometimes, it's good not to just delete photos immediately if you don't know what you want to do with them.  Leave them, come back to them, try again.

The first I found was from the Lake District about 3 years ago... Maybe more actually.  Blencathra was partially lit by warm evening light but the areas in shadow were a blue/grey shade.  On the back of the camera, I could see this looked flat and uninteresting.  But that wasn't how it looked to my eyes.  I tried editing it up when I got home but I could not recreate what I saw.  About three weeks ago I watched Mark Littlejohn talk about "split toning" on Youtube with Nigel Danson (two very impressive landscape photographers) and it inspired me to edit this image, et voila!

Blencathra, edit version 2

Just for comparison, below is the edit from 3 years ago...  Too dark, lacking the warm colours that I saw and the shadows not showing up those details in the rocks - not how I remember it.

Same photo as above and the first attempt at editing this image...

I also found this image of Egleton Village Church in winter about 3 years ago.  I remember looking at it and thinking something could be made of that view.  With the set up I had at the time, I took 8 vertical images with a view to make a panoramic image.  But nothing worked when I got it onto the computer.  It looked flat and uninteresting.  The main subject, the Church, was not eye catching so I parked it in the depths of the external hard drive with the intention to come back another time...  If I ever remembered.  It just took coronavirus for me to get round to it and get this result...

Egleton Church from Rutland Water Nature Reserve

What did I do with it?  Well if you really want to know... (if you don't, skip this paragraph!).  First I stitched the 8 images together, worked on the contrast being careful that the trees around the Church did not become a dark splurge.  Then I worked on the sky contrast and colours, accentuating those pinks and magentas, not forgetting to do the same with the reflection on the lagoon water at the bottom.  The Church was the main subject so a little selective exposure work around the Church spire brought the attention to the Church.  I then added an Orton effect to give it some dreaminess/softness.  I chose this to be primarily on the trees, Church and the houses to the right of the Church.  The pano view wasn't working for me so I cropped in with a 5:4 aspect ratio.  Finished off with a vignette to try to keep the viewer focused on the village and there you go...

The last two photos I want to share were taken last spring/summer...

Big fluffy Highland

Sweet little lamb curious about what I was doing

I hope that you like these images, stay safe everyone.

M