The Kenley & Caterham Valleys

Out on the hills one fine evening last week, I'm exploring around the area near to the Kenley Airfield gliding site. There are some spots just below the airfield with views in various directions, mainly west across the Kenley valley & south towards Caterham, which is over the hills from here.

All with the K7 and a mixture of wide angles (Samyang 14mm / Pentax 28mm) and telezoom (Pentax M 75-150).



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Many thanks for taking a look and for any thoughts.

#3

Very striking ! Love the texture and colours in the foreground and then you suddenly spot the very dark conifer [ ?] directing your attention to the ploughed field beyond .

Thanks techno! You can see the massive difference in focal length magnification between shot 1 & 3 .... in No1, at 14mm,you can see the ploughed field on horizon near the left side with the tiny conifer just in front of it barely visable. The 3rd shot is taken from a nearby position at about 150mm.

Nigel, that looks like a very pleasant area. If you are aiming for the natural colours of the vegetation, in my opinion they are best in 3 and 6. The greens of the grass look unnatural to me in several of the others. They look right in 5 but I would like a bit more contrast in the image. I also think that some e.g. 1, 7 and 8 would be better brighter and/or warmer. A couple of quick edits:







Cheers.
Philip

Thanks MrB, I think the contrast boost on that first one is better, but on the 2nd I still favour the original dim lighting as the sun was on the way out just then.

Last night at work I had the shots open over 2 browsers and 2 monitors (admittedly not well colour calibrated) and I was seeing 4 different greens Not to worry, these were just the first from a very productive shoot, so I'll do a few similar ones again - it may be the shadow saturation which could be reduced, that might help. There hasn't been any colour balance or hue changes from the camera set daylight (plus a couple of notches +yellow) -the main thing for me is that the colours look good on my monitor and it carries over to the prints when they come back, which I find they always do.

Thanks again for taking a look.

#3 stands out above the rest by a mile, but it needs a bit of processing to make it pop. As shown it's very flat and 2 dimensional. It need some processing to give it some depth.

All the others I would put in the reject pile after a shoot - OK with the exception of #4 perhaps which is rather tasty but somehow suffers from being pointed too high. More nice curvy grass foreground and less sky

As everyone else has suggested, #3 is the stand out. Nicely framed by the trees to left and right. These pull your eye into the picture.

No coincidence that this is with the telephoto. On your wide angle shots there is little of interest in the foreground to draw you in or to create a 3D effect

Your shots remind me of when I tried a 20mm on film Nigel, which is pretty exactly the same FOV as your 14mm on APSC. Due to the extreme WA the background gets diminished and I found it was essential to feature something interesting really close up and large in the foreground to maintain interest.

That said I found the lens still too wide for landscape work and something like 17mm or 24mm on FF gave me results more in accordance with my intentions. Plainly other folk's brains work differently though as many stunning extreme WA shots show.

As well as being taken with a telephoto, it's no coincidence that no.3, by consensus is the best of the bunch, is the only one without a featureless sky appearing in it. Blue skies can be nice to sit under but are not always so appealing in photographs.

I suspect you need to develop further your critical awareness of the framing and content of your shots. Your evident interest in the processing of your photographs seems to be currently outpacing your ability to 'see' the shot worth taking and preserving. As gwing suggests, you are probably not particularly well-served in shots like these by such a wide-angle lens: the foreground, often lacking interesting features, can become a vast no-man's land.

Thanks for all the considered feedback people, and good to see that the usual PU high standards are in full force But we need to be critical to benefit in the longer term, agreed.

Luckily I didn't restrict myself to 14mm on this shoot - there are plenty of other options with the telephoto and 28mm in the processing queue, so watch this space! I must admit, I do still like the shots with the illuminated bands of foreground yellow flowers - that was my foreground interest and I find it attractive - but I accept that others may not and still see too much 'empty space'. The 14mm is challenging in this type of location when you are some distance from the main interest, so I'll keep working at it and experimenting.

I think you've done very well to squeeze these well exposed, sharp shots out of an area which looks pleasant to walk in but lacks the qualities needed for great landscape photography, Nigel.

Intrestingly, I was walking in similar country today with more interesting skies than you had to work with and didn't bother taking any photographs, knowing how lacklustre would be the results.

I'm not going to pass comment on these images, purely because I think it's not going to benefit Nigel any more than the views already expressed. What I will say is that I think you should make the effort to travel further afield Nigel and visit some more interesting locations. I can't see anything here that is taxing you from a compositional point of view and I think you need greater challenges to move your photography along. I would tend to agree with one of the posts above in that you probably need to work more on the compositional / framing elements of your images than you do on the processing. Get it right in the camera - that's what I always strive for, not just from an exposure perspective but also from an artistic and framing point of view.

For example, if I'm photographing birds, I won't bother unless the background is right, as the resulting images will not be worth processing, no matter how technically competent they are. I'm not suggesting you should not take any photos in locations that are not stunning, but I think you do need to find more interesting locations and see what you can do once there.

Regards
David

A fair point but a trip to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the backstreets of Mumbai isn't available to most of us

But really there's interesting and inspiring shots to be had anywhere if you stop getting your mind bogged down with left brain technical nonsense and start using right brained artistic visions through the view finder.


On the contrary I would say the more mundane the scene appears to be at first glance the more taxing it is in terms of composition. I mean even a point and shoot shot of the Grand Canyon in evening light with some contrasty shadows is going to look great.

But really it depends upon what Nigel wants out of his photography. I cannot help but comment from an artistic POV as technical aspects mean nothing to me if the picture has no emotional value.

If Nigel gets off on bagging a technically perfect image regardless of what the composition is then maybe comment on an artistic level is pointless.

So tell us Nigel, what are you aiming for? Art or Science?

I appreciate that little bit of balance Andrew, at least as far as the technical qualities of the actual images go. No, I wasn't planning on submitting them for Landscape Photographer of the Year! As for creative qualities, well I'll keep on exploring the area (I don't have much choice). For me, I can't just reject my shots because one aspect isn't perfect - I have to make the most of it and use each experience to build new approaches for the next time - I have to appreciate them and enjoy what qualities they do have.

I'm rather lucky in fact to have what I do around here - it's 45 minutes by train to central London after all!

I'm reminded here a bit of that great Fawlty Towers episode, you know, the one with the hard of hearing Mrs Richardson complaining about the view .... Basil goes into one .. 'yes, yes, that is Torquay -
what exactly were you expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel window? Herds of wildebeast? The hanging gardens of Babylon??'

Thanks also David for you supportive view there - unfortunately longer trips away are only a dream for me. But I'll keep trying to make the most of it around here -so if any of you northern guys are thinking of making a trip to shoot the Kenley & Caterham valleys, don't worry, I've got it covered.

That was my point.