The Rectory

Fed up with uploading bog standard photos, I took my Canon 5dmkiv with me to Open Church. Basil and I both appreciated the walk and meeting the people over coffee.

Wendy didn't say much but I think she appreciated the small parcel of gluten free Christmas cake that I gave her. She'd said before Christmas that she'd never eaten gluten free cake.

As we left, I made some multiple exposure shots from the churchyard. Basil enjoyed pratting about amongst the gravestones.

I've said it before, but will do so again. I REALLY admire the work of Valda Bailey. She constructs paintings using multi exposure in camera with limited tweaks in Lightroom subsequently, sometimes also using intentional camera movement. Hers is what I describe as genuinely creative photography. I get so cross when I view the winners of the creative sections of photographic competitions. The work is mostly derivative, based on collages in Photoshop. Nothing wrong in that, it can look very striking but there seems to be no understanding of impressionism in photography, using just the camera.

Everything that I do at the moment is empirical. Like Valda, I am finding that many of my experiments are NOT 'keepers.'  I simply need to keep experimenting, keeping notes, mostly mentally, of which blend modes work best for which effect. You can alter shutter speed, aperture, white balance between shots, plus change lenses, but not ISO. You can't change blend modes between shots.

Valda plays with clarity, contrast, hue, saturation and colour channels in Curves in Lightroom subsequently. She doesn't always obtain the end result she had visualised.

Anyway, this is the shot that worked best for me today. I increased Clarity and Contrast, played with sliders on Curves, and also the sliders for Hue, which is why the photo looks 'coppery.'

The walk was more than enough exercise for me today. Len took Basil to tennis where he sat in his coat on his mat while Len played. The reward is a run through the meadow on the other side of the road when tennis is over.

Also watched 'Bright' on Netflix, which seems to have been inspired, a bit, by Lord of the Rings. The gratuitous violence is standard American fare, in my view.

Prawns tonight. Yay!