French Alps - quick blast before Spring has Sprung

We have been lucky enough to do a quick trip to the French Alps for a quick ski.  4 days of sunshine and pretty good conditions.  Life is good.

Vicinity Websites - New Website for Cornish Photographer

Just about finished a new website for a Cornwall based photographer - Sam Carnell.

Built a new bespoke website for him at www.on-the-edge-photography.co.uk

After a Storm on Cox Tor

Continuing my study of the Tors on Dartmoor,  here are a couple of views from the top of Cox Tor, after a storm head moved north.

View North from Cox Tor towards White Tor on Dartmoor

The old familiar horizon with pimple that is Brentor, and home turf, in the distance:

View NW from Cox Tor towards Brentor

Snakes and Adders on Dartmoor

I was walking around Belstone on the Northern edge of Dartmoor, heading down towards Ivy Tor when I nearly stepped on an adder.

It's only the second time this has happened to me.  It was a male I think, probably out for some rumpy pumpy, but he didn't move away, which was a bit alarming.

Naturally I got out the camera and took his portrait, requesting more than just a motion shot up until the point where he stopped, turned towards me and hissed.  OK I thought, the guy just wants to meet a girl and not stop for a few snaps.  Message understood.

Adder on Dartmoor

Dartmoor adder making a getaway

Newton Abbot Town Quay Bridge - Marketing Photographs

A recent commission saw me hovering at dusk beneath the new cycle and footbridge over the River Teign that links Kingsteignton to Newton Abbot.

A marketing company needed a super-high resolution photograph of the bridge at dusk for a whole-wall mural inside an office.

This is what a Hasselblad does best - 39 megapixels goes a long way.  Only problem is the noise - low light levels play havoc with signal-to-noise-ratios.  The answer is to shoot multiple exposures (about 6), stack the layers then adjust opacities incrementally.  That takes care of random noise.  What's left is then painstakingly removed in Photoshop.  Hours of pain.

The end result is a really big image that can be splattered over a big wall and still look good, not that you can tell from the tiddler I've attached below:

Newton Abbot Town Quay Bridge and River Teign at Dusk

Newton Abbot Town Quay Bridge at Dusk