nomadlens
Images of the South West
Passage Wood, Noss Mayo
Another shot taken in Passage Wood during our walk along the South West Coast Path from Noss Mayo (see Moss, Passage Woods). These woods contain some splendid gnarled and twisted trees and the shot here is taken through them and across the River Yealm to the Red Cove cliffs. You can see why local boat trips sometimes (mis)advertise this coastal ria as the “Fjord of the West”.
Shots taken through trees are always difficult and rarely successful, particularly if there is an abundance of foliage obscuring the background; in winter such shots work better and I am reasonably pleased with this one. I don’t usually try them but this tree was such a good subject that I couldn’t resist having a go.
The image is a combination of three bracketed exposures, allowing the possibility of getting a little detail into the dark foreground branches whilst also exposing the sunlit background correctly. It was taken without a tripod, another thing almost guaranteed to fail in the presence of any foliage as even on the most windless day there is likely to be movement of the leaves in between shots, resulting in ‘ghosting’ in the merged shot.
Location
Passage Woods, Noss Mayo, Devon, UK
EXIF
Camera: Olympus E-M1
Lens: Olympus M 12-40 mm f/2.8
Focal Length: 12mm
Aperture: ƒ/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125s
ISO: 200
Image Details
This image is an HDR of 3 shots 2ev apart (the before/after slider shows the middle exposure and because of the nature of the merging process the alignment of the before and after image is not precise). It was merged and tone mapped in Photomatix using the 'Details Enhancer' algorithm. In Photoshop it took an extensive trip through Color Efex Pro with a little saturation (I had reduced the saturation considerably in Photomatix as its saturation algorithm is frequently so garish), Detail Extractor, Cross Processing, Darken/Lighten Centre, Graduated Neutral Density and White Neutralizer. The resulting layer was dialled way back though to give the image only a subtle lift as my goal was to get as close as I could to what my eyes saw when taking the shot.
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