November: month in review
Photography’s taking a back seat for the moment…
Durham Cathedral Interior
Sony A7R V | 16mm f/6.3 1/125s ISO 3200
What’s this month’s image? It’s a monochrome image of the interior of Durham Cathedral.
Did you do anything to it? This was taken handheld inside the cathedral, so I needed quite a high ISO to offset the narrower aperture needed to get the depth of field and the higher shutter speed needed to hand hold the camera. The consequence is that the original has a fair amount of noise. DxO PureRAW 3 does a fantastic job at reducing noise, but the Lightroom plugin is a little finicky with Sony files.
Apart from that, there’s a black and white conversion with the aim of highlighting the detail in the pillars and ceiling. There’s also quite a heavy vignette on the image to keep the attention in the centre. I’m undecided as to whether it’s too heavy, but like most of my images I’ll leave it for a month or so before coming back to it.
What’s it doing here? We’ve been busy with some stuff for the move, which has limited the opportunities to get out and about with the camera. The weather has also been absolutely mince, which has again reduced the opportunities as well as my motivation. That said, we had a few days at the end of the month and given that we needed to be in the north east we managed a couple of nights in Durham.
It’s a location I’ll definitely revisit. I think we were a couple of weeks too late to get the best of the conditions, but there was enough colour left along the riverside to suggest that this could be worth revisiting next autumn as a day out. The town itself is dominated by the cathedral, which is visible from all around the city. The opulence and space of the interior matches the grandeur of the exterior and is well worth a visit. We even managed the 325 steps up the main tower, but as I don’t have an underwater housing for the camera, the photo opportunities were limited!
We also swung by Derwent Reservoir and Hexam Abbey on the way back up north, and I was able to take in Roker Pier on the way down, which is another location I’ve wanted to recce for a little while. Hopefully the shots below give a flavour of the trip.
Have you been up to much else? Not a great deal… Despite the weather and the lack of inclination we did manage a couple of days out. We caught the last of the Autumn colours around the Falls of Leny and, more locally, had a wander around the RSPB reserve at Lochwinnoch.
I also needed to be across in Edinburgh and took the opportunity to check out the Kelpies after dark. Again, it’s a shot that I’ve wanted to have a look at for a while. I’m quite pleased with this panel as first attempt. I’ll probably be back again…
Kelpies
Fujifilm X-H2S | XF 16-80mm, various settings
Coming Up
Christmas, Birthday, Brighton…
