August: month in review
Each month I aim to pick an image that, in my mind at least, captures the flavour of that month. It might not be the best image from the month, or the most spectacular of subjects; it just needs to illustrate something about the month.
Corn Field, Elie with views to the Fife coast
Fujifilm X-Pro2 | 20mm f/11 1/160s ISO200
What’s this month’s image? A return to a more detailed scene this month with a shot of a corn field near Elie on the Fife coast. There’s a hint of the broad sweep of the coastline too in the background.
Did you do anything to it? The raw image out of the camera was pretty flat, so I’ve boosted the contrast and saturation. I also quite like a slight blue hint in the sky, so I’ve played with the colour balance between highlights and mid-tones in Photoshop.
What’s it doing here? Daughter number two returns to study in St Andrews in September. Given the disruption of the last couple of years accommodation is more in demand than usual, but she’s managed to rent a one bedroomed flat close to the centre of town. This was the second trip up to help her get the flat in some order (the first attempt didn’t go to plan - a sorry tale) which we tied in with dinner with friends on the evening and a lovely walk the following afternoon.
Elie sits down the coast from St Andrews and is one of a number of very pretty spots on the Fife coast. The walk we took started close to the very picturesque Shell Bay before rising over the headline on the route towards the town. This view, looking over a gorgeously golden corn field and back towards Shell Bay, presented itself on the climb up to the headland.
What I like about the image (and you can decide for yourself) is the colour and detail in the corn field. On its own, however, I think the image would be fairly generic; what sets it off is the sea, coast and Fife hills in the background which give the image a sense of place. I could also have tried to crop out or clone out the weed growing in the bottom right, but I like it and think it adds a point of interest to the image.
Have you been up to much else? It’s been another busy month. I’ve been through in Edinburgh photographing some of the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas (more on that later). I also tried my hand at photographing canoeing up at Grandtully. This proved to be another exercise in photographing things moving quite quickly, only this time I also had a damp backside.
Photographically, the main difference between this and motorsport is that the water does a great job of conveying movement. Practically this means that the shutter speed can be kept quite high, which is just as well give than the canoeists movements can be quite erratic. That said, dropping the shutter speed can be used to interesting effect.
Contrast in the scene needs to be managed, but the biggest challenge is the unpredictability and pace of movement. Consequently, in addition to a few ‘keepers’ I now have a stupendous amount of photographs of paddlers with paddles in front of their face, paddlers with arms covering their face, paddlers with faces covered in water, blurred paddlers, out of focus paddlers and bits of river where paddlers have just been. A sample of the better shots is below.
Any recommendations? A couple…
Reading: I’ve started some planning for our October trip to Skye. Photographing Scotland by Dougie Cunningham is usually a pretty reliable place to start looking for inspiration on any trip within Scotland. Highly recommended.
Listening: Nothing specific, I’ve been listening to a bit of a mix on my travels this month. I would, however, thoroughly recommend Mark Steel’s podcast, What the F*** is Going On? It’s a lovely mix of invective and the surreal and genuinely very funny.
Viewing: Sons of Anarchy on Netflix has been my accompaniment for a few monster edits; tosh, but enjoyable tosh.
Lastly, any final words? September sees the start of the club season, so it will probably be a little quieter. However, I said that last month…
