You can’t beat a good waterfall as the subject for a beautiful landscape. And the autumn leaves cover up a lot of the usually-distracting riverbank, rather like snow might to in mid-winter. This is Plas Power near Wrexham, an easy-to-reach destination.
Autumn’s a great time to make colourful and beautiful images, but here are three more impressionistic pictures; all were created simply by waving the camera about during the exposure.
If your picture is only going to be viewed for a fraction of a second you need “impact” – and this picture certainly has it.
I enter a few photographic competitions; mostly too see what the critical world thinks of my pictures. Of course the judges are often wronger than a very wrong thing. But sometimes they can get it right!
Recently I competed for the first time in the Trierenberg Supercircuit which describes itself as the largest annual salon of photography on the globe. It’s actually four different salons (that’s why it’s a ‘circuit’) with different judging panels; and each picture is entered into each of the four, so your pic get 4 chances to be recognised.
A huge number of photographers enter this competition each year so I was surprised and very pleased that 3 out of my 4 entries were accepted – two of them were accepted by all 4 salons. This is one of my accepted entries, ‘Palace of Transport’:
There is a second ‘Special Themes’ circuit run in parallel; not quite so prestigious but still highly competitive; in this I entered 12 pictures and 9 were accepted, 6 of these by all 4 of the salons. This is one of my accepted entries; ‘Winter Frost’:
Clough Williams-Ellis is most famous for building Portmeirion, but not too far away is Plas Brondanw which he spent most of his life working on. It’s a small garden with lots of features designed to make the most of the surrounding scenery. I tried to make a few photos that were a bit different and this is the first one.
Snow has it’s pluses and minuses. It’s great to photograph but quite inconvenient to move around in, in a car or on foot. This is taken on a compact camera, easier to carry and use when the snow is blowing around you. Initially I excluded the power lines but fortunately then realised they made a good contribution to the composition. The scene you’re looking at is the Wimble in New Radnor.
At this time of year the sun doesn’t get too much higher and often produces nice shadows, especially on a crisp and slightly frosty day. As is obvious this picture is looking straight at the sun. It was taken using a cheap Nikon kit lens but still gives a great contrasty result.
This autumn has seen some particularly good colours maybe due to all the rain and the warm weather. This is a picture of the Fairy Glen in Snowdonia; it’s quite dark even in bright weather so it is easy to make long exposures to show the water’s swirling flow.
It’s autumn again and yesterday’s sunny day made the very best of the trees and their leaves. I did not have to walk far to see this scene. The picture does not use a polarising filter as it would have made the colours too colourful and the sky just too dark.
This is New York’s Central Park. I had imagined a warm blue-sky day as one does after seeing promotional photos of New York. But it was wet and windy. Too windy to hold an umbrella and a camera. In the end I think the photograph is better for being on a not-so-great day as it has a distinct atmosphere that wouldn’t be possible on a sunny September morning.
