Fen ditch

At last, the sun has returned. We've had almost wall-to-wall sunshine, the first since Christmas Day. Around lunchtime it even felt warm on my back when I was strolling round the garden.

We took the dogs over to Holme Fen this afternoon, and though it was lovely to have the sun, it actually made photography quite difficult, because of the extremes of light and shade. Following on from the examples of My Year in Pictures and Dotty, I decided to try setting my camera to take both JPEGs and RAW. I went with this option because I didn't really know whether I would cope with processing the RAW files.

My chosen image is of a ditch that cuts through Holme Fen National Nature Reserve, a huge birch wood which developed on the former site of Whittlesey Mere, drained around the mid 19th century. This is a very characteristic fenland scene, and one where shooting in RAW made all the difference. The JPEG couldn't really cope with the extremes of light and shade, and by tweaking the RAW file I was able to put retain much more detail, and produce a photograph which seemed much closer to what I experienced.

So there you are, my first attempt at processing a RAW file. I don't think I'll be going back to JPEG now that I've discovered how easy it is!

Please view in large!