Country Contrast

This photo was taken a while ago at TruckFest South West. I must confess I have a slight obsession with heavy goods vehicles, so TruckFest was heaven for me. I had taken the trusty Pentax ME Super with me and I managed to use up a whole reel of film while out. I’ve been quite busy recently, which is why I haven’t had a chance to get the film developed until a few days ago.

It was about half way through the day when we saw this pair of Tractor Units from country supplies specialist: Countrywide. The cab art really caught my eye, the bright and vibrant scenes that surrounded the cab were very impressive. I thought that the contrast between the classic country scenes and the very modern cab was very interesting; it shows how much farming and transport have changed and improved together over the years. With each decade more efficient and cheaper processes have been introduced: starting with horses towing everything on the farm and on the road; and culminating in today’s incredibly modern and high precision designs, with computers controlling every process.

I really think that this is more than just a photo, it contains much of our agricultural and transport history, showing the legacy that we have produced over the past 100 years. A legacy that will be left to the future, to increase the efficiency and profitability of agriculture and transport. This could be good or bad depending on your own opinions, making agriculture and transport more efficient could be good because less fossil fuels will be burnt and the world will be a greener place; but on the other hand, with more machinery and even tighter tolerances the work will become more stressful and the green country will become much more mechanised with vehicles working everywhere.

What you take away from this photo is dependent on your own opinions, but maybe take a minute to think about how much progress has been made in the past 100 hundred years; and then think: what do we do now, where does this take us? These are the questions that future generations will be asking themselves.

Mat

Falling

I managed to get out for a quick wander today even though it was raining; I thought I could get some interesting effects. As I was walking the rain started to get worse so I darted under a tree for some shelter. While under the tree I noticed how the rain was clinging to the undersides of the leaves.

I really liked how the raindrop had stuck to the underside. I really think the composition summed up the weather and the atmosphere of today. I took this photo with a slight underexposure to create a more gloomy impression. This worked really well because the leaves are much darker without losing any detail in them but the rain drop is still very clear.

The only editing I did was to crop the photo down to reduce the amount of background because it was a distraction. By reducing the area of the photo it focuses the attention onto the rain drop and the leaves around it.

I like the effect of this photo; I think it sums up the weather we are having completely. I really do hope that we have some more sunny weather soon!

Mat

Small beauty

I had a morning off today and so I went for a short walk. After I sat down for lunch I saw an interesting group of flowers next to where I was sitting. Fortunately Bex had let me borrow her camera for the day, because I took quite a few photos today! This one came about quite by chance.

I took this photo just after I had finished my lunch. I focused the camera on a yellow butter-cup in the centre of the group of flowers. There was quite a lot of flowers in the photo so I decided that I should focus the photo onto the central flower; so I cropped the photo down. While I was in photoshop I decided to alter the exposure by darkening the shadows slightly and darkening the highlights by a very small amount to reduce the amount of white-out.

I really liked the effect of this photo with the blurred foreground and the bright, clear yellow of the flower. I’m quite impressed with how the editing came out in this photo; I think I’m slowly getting better with using photoshop and hopefully I will get better still.

Mat

Levels

I went to an art gallery today, as photography isn’t my only passion. I was lucky enough to spend the entirety of my time with a sketchbook and pencil in hand. I didn’t leave the gallery until just before closing time when most had already left & it was starting to go dark so the lights had been switched on.

I was on the top floor, and I took this picture as I walked down the main staircase. I like how the rows of lights work as lead in lines to the dinosaur skeleton at the back of the picture. I think being able to see 3 floors, where the people are and what is happening on each floor really adds interest to the picture.

Using flash wasn’t allowed in the gallery, so I had to use a high ISO coupled with exposure compensation. I increased the saturation in Photoshop afterwards because I liked the colour of the building itself.

I really enjoyed going to the art gallery today, and I’m hoping to go again soon with Mat. He said he’s really enjoying himself, but can’t wait to get back to the blog on Sunday!

Bex

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