On Exmoor

[Fozzybear]

I've just today returned from a week at Lynmouth in north Devon and am starting to look at the 800+ photographs I took while I was there. I think I may have already found the best one of the trip though - this was taken somewhere on Exmoor (to the north east North Moulton I think) and was our first view of the real north Devon countryside. I think I've fallen in love with the place - it was a real wrench to come home to Essex today!

I altered the camera configuration for the trip, setting contrast low and colour saturation high. It seems to be beneficial from this shot. Nikon D50 & 70-300VR.

[Fozzybear]

A couple more I've worked on taken in the same area:

Stitched in Autostitch from 7 images, processed/resized in Nikon Capture NX.

As usual, photos are clickyable if you want to see bigger versions.

[Holowlegs]

Hi Fozzybear


Went to North Devon back in April for easter. I stayed in Torrington, but did drive one day to Lynmouth. All I can say is this is a beauiful part off the country.


By the way very nice pictures, you done well with the autostitch one


Cheers Holo

[Liquid101]

Ahhhh the rolling hills of my homeland. Well, almost - I come from the Somerset side of Exmoor

Really like the first shot - a very nice layered effect.

only get back about 3 times a year now.

[Fozzybear]

Thanks guys. It's going to take quite some time to work through all these! Another couple for you, Lynmouth harbour late evening:

and the harbour channel marking poles:

[Liquid101]

Really like that last one - great mood, and I liek the use of grain too. Very nice shot.

[mwncidur]

I too like the last one, great stormy, happening sort of shot. I like the harbour shot aswell.

The country side shots are great, and if they weren't in a thread about exmoor I would have guessed that they had been taken in Wales

[Curious Yellow]

Really like the panorama shot. You can feel how expansive the view is out there.

[Fozzybear]

Thanks guys. The countryside probably does look like Wales, it's only across the Bristol channel so the underlying geology is probably fairly similar.

This one is from one of the images I used to make the big panoramic:

and these two are from further north in the moors, somewhere to the south of Lynmouth:

the weather was pretty atrocious when I took those last two, but it really helped the mood of the shots! The white dots in the middle shot are sheep. There are some on the left field of the first shot too. Big landscape!

[Fozzybear]

Any more for any more?

Our first view of Lynmouth:

and a rough photo of the shrew that I had a close encounter with at County Gate:

photographed with the Nikkor 18-70mm and on-board flash and cropped severely!

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by Fozzybear

I know this road very well, some very interesting corners. Did you go as far as Porlock Hill?

[Fozzybear]

Originally Posted by Liquid101

I know this road very well, some very interesting corners. Did you go as far as Porlock Hill?

We did - that's one STEEP hill! We drove from Lynmouth to Minehead along the A39 and it wasn't enjoyable going down it but coming back it looked like a wall!

[Fozzybear]

Still working my way through those raw files:

Looking east from a footpath near County Gate.

Bossington beach at Porlock. A rather difficult raw file to work on as this had very low contrast and a bit of an odd colour cast from the rain and mist. One I'll probably end revisiting again and again to try and get a result I'm happy with.

A young grey wagtail on the wall near our apartment in Lynmouth. A heavy crop at ISO800 and f/5.6 on my 70-300VR meant that this needed quite a bit of tweaking to get a usable shot from it!

On the steam train at Minehead


I'll probably revisit some of the ones I've done already as I know they can be improved, but I'm trying to avoid redoing lots of them or I'll never get through all the shots I took. I'm only on the second day and I've been back a week!

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

That grainy overcast seascape is nice. I went to Devon last summer to see clients, lovely part of the world.

Gordon

[Liquid101]

Really nice to see these images. I was raised in Minehead and my best mate was in Porlock. I spent many hours exploring on the coastline from Bossington to County gate - rolling in the pebbles running them through my hands