[Tobers]

Never being one to miss an opportunity, I snuck out today to scout an elevated location for a night time shot of Heathrow airport. I want one with light trails from the planes taking off and landing, with the hubub of the airport at the bottom of the pic.

And yes, I know it's too late for the comp, but my interest in night photography has increased since the comp (and I want to get a better pic than the one I entered).

Anyway, I found the highest accessible spot which is in a very nicely landscaped park that I never knew existed. There is a car park at this location (copy & paste into Google Maps) 51°29'15.06"N, 0°29'26.80"W where you can park up and go for a wander. There's a hill that you can walk up and see T5 quite well, but you cant see the runways. It'll look quite different at night I reckon, so will venture up one night next week.

To get to the point though, I found a horse. Digital Photography mag has a bit on silhouettes this month, so I took this pic. The sky is kind of dramatic which I didn't really notice until I got back to my PC. I like the way it effectively splits the pic into 4 layers of shade. Taken in RAW with a Canon 350D and 70-200 F4L at ISO100 f8 1/500th. I metered on the sky, set to manual mode at the settings above, and hit the button. I've slightly changed the levels in Photoshop, and put the border on it, otherwise it's unadulterated.

Being a bit of a fiddler, I applied the "Scorching Sunsets" action to the pic and got this. I think the original is best, but the red is certainly dramatic. Hadn't tried to level the horizon on this one...

On the way back, I stopped off on the A3 where I'd seen some nice snowdrops on the way up to Heathrow (just north of the northbound layby which is south of the A3/M25 junction). Trampling through the bracken to get there, I disturbed 2 quite large deer which I attempted to shoot with my lens cap on

I wanted to experiement with small aperture deep depth-of-field shots which I see & admire on here & DGrin. The light was crappy so I converted this one to black & white in Photoshop. 350D as before but with a 17-85 F4 IS at f22 and 0.2 sec exposure (on a tripod). Good for an experiment but a bit disappointing.

And then to finish off I took a "stock" shot of some bracken for my Fotolia account in case some madman wants a picture of dead bracken

All in all, a good few hours of learning more about what I'm meant to be doing with this camera thing.

Tobers

[Liquid101]

Great shots - really nice silhouette. I think I prefer the version that you haven't played with.

Might be nice to re-colourise the snowdrops - also a great shot though

Nice work

[Tobers]

Ta Liquid. What do you mean by recolourise? Obviously put colour in, but in what way? I could make them all into buttercups by making them yellow for example.

[Liquid101]

I was just thinking that if the colour on the original was a little flat because of the poor light, you could pump the colour up a little.

[vulkan75]

I like the unedited horse shot Tobers......right place right time

Look forward to seeing your plane light trails.

[bowenjones]

I love the top shot tobers
I'd also like to see the snowdrops picture in colour although your b&w conversion does look good

[Tobers]

Here's the colour snowdrops shot. Better than the black & white one? Any suggestions for processing?

[Tobers]

How's this for a mod of the snowdrops? I used the technique described here: http://tricks.onigo.net/guides/2005/...p-by-step.html

I do like that macro snowdrops shot from Yandros though!