Water is fascinating; waves and waterfalls, streams and ripples; it moves and changes shape by the second and is constantly changing. Even apparently still waters will have ripples, currents, motion. And no two photographs will ever be exactly the same; a photoimaginators playground with room to experiment with exposures, apertures, shutter speed … and imagination.

Still pointing the camera down and looking for small detail I took this photograph. Other than a bit of tweaking I did not do much in photoshop. So what is it? Well it was a windy day at the beach and the wind had picked out small irregularities in the sand and created a mini-dune system; no more than a centimetre high and a couple of centimetres long. The next tide will have obliterated it; proving that you cannot always go back to a location and take the picture you knew afterwards that you should have taken, you need to use your eyes and brain and see the opportunities that are there; well that and a digital camera with a large memory card helps … I took lots, slightly different angles, slightly different exposures and slightly different framing. All (!!) I have to do now is review those dozens of photographs of this subject; sometimes there has to be a downside to digital.

Now I do love the big landscapes and admire the images of them. And I have taken quite a few myself. Yet I also find fascination in the small details; so whilst other photographers are pointing their cameras up and bolting on the wide angle lenses I often find myself pointing the camera down and bolting on the telephoto. Each to his own and it pays to try something different. This image started as a small detail left in the sand by the retreating tide. I then pushed the colours just to see what would happen. Interesting.

This image was taken at Skelwith Force in Cumbria. Now you might think it was black & white but no it’s not; just dark water swirling through the fall and the small gorge being set off by the sparkling sunlight. Very little photoshopping here; it didn’t need it, just lovely swirls and sparkles.

This started as another photo of water ripples near Rydal Water. And I pushed the contrast and sharpness and what emerged was a strange twisted smile. So I played with it with various options in photoshop and finally tried the the extrude option. Now an alien twisted smile.

After my foray into the world of studio shoots … I’m back

This image started as a photo taken at the south end of Rydal Water in Cumbria. I cropped it tightly so as to give the eye/brain minimal information as to what was rock and what was water, just reducing it to pattern and texture. I then pushed the colours hard in photoshop (but not to extreme, it caused them to break up messily) as the original was almost pure black & white, and pleasing in its own right, yet …. this is the result, which also pleases me. If anyone wants to see the B&W version then just write a comment.