Geoff's pictures : Sunset amidst prehistory and mystery

[Geoff]

Hello again all. I've been revisiting some of my photographs using Adobe Lightroom over the last few days... it extracts much more detail out of the raw files than seemed possible when the pictures were first taken. On such note, I present a couple from a site a short drive from my home. Taken at sunset on a glorious August evening a couple of years ago. Some of you may have seen a previous incarnation of one of these pictures, on another site.

Some background for you. This church, abandoned in the middle ages, was built nearly 1000 years ago, in the midst of a prehistoric henge. The henge is the grassy mound you can see surrounding the church in the picture. In fact this is part of the outlying areas that run to Stonehenge, so may well be connected. So this site has been sacred for thousands of years. The church was abandoned because of the devil and his appearance/interference with the site after the Bubonic plague wiped out the nearby village. Having been there to take these after dark, I can confirm that it is indeed a spooky site.. particularly in the midst of the church ruins when total darkness has fallen.

When I took these, I was just packing up and there was a large crash and a large stag came from the location of picture 2 (a burial mound with trees), straight through the ancient yew trees that mark the entrance to the Henge (and probably have done since my ancestors were banging rocks together) and straight across in front of me. It was a terrifying and exhilarating moment, all together. Given the history of the site, and the significance of the route chosen, it was not a little unnerving.

As always, encouragements, commentary criticism and requests to desist all welcome.

Picture 1 :

Church at sunset,

Picture 2 :

Burial Mound, outlying the henge, sunset (check out the candyfloss cloud!)

-Geoff

 

[wildcat]

Much green above the bodies under the caramelle cloudie.

A Druid landscape, eh?

Very good shots.

 

[lbloom]

Holy crap. That's some dynamic range.

ND Filters/multiple shots?


Beautiful.

 

[darlets]

why aren't there castles in Australia?

Great pics by the way

 

[Varelse]

why aren't there castles in Australia?

Great pics by the way

I want to visit a castle now.

 

[darlets]

I want to visit a castle now.

Hold me Varelse. I have castle envy.

I loved castles as a boy. Spend many an afternoon designing my own on paper.

 

[Varelse]

Hold me Varelse. I have castle envy.

I loved castles as a boy. Spend many an afternoon designing my own on paper.

There is something fascinating about castles...though I tended to design little island cities, myself.

 

[darlets]

There is something fascinating about castles...though I tended to design little island cities, myself.

island cities. I'm on it.

 

[Geoff]

Holy crap. That's some dynamic range.

ND Filters/multiple shots?


Beautiful.

Thanks all.

This is how it is done...

Shot in raw on a Canon 300D. Polariser... which helps hold down the glare haze in the sky at sunset, as well as enhancing the sunset colours. I exposed for the brightness, which left the foreground dark. I then let Adobe Lightroom extract the maximum dynamic range from the raw file and just adjusted the exposure for the sky. Then brought out the dark foreground with "fill light". This introduced some luminance grain due to the low exposure of the foreground, so I stripped as much of this out as possible with a reduce noise - luminance slider in Lightroom. I reduced the luminance of the sky colour using a custom click and slide on Lightroom - this just enhances sky contrast to bring out the clouds. Finally a modest vibrancy boost (about 20%) to saturate.

Sounds complex.. about 5 clicks in 2 minutes once you get the hang of such things. No colours or information were introduced that weren't already in the picture, the editing was to adjust it for best look in such a challenging photographic environment (low light direct in to a setting sun is a nightmare!).

-Geoff