Stonehenge - Photo Biker 4

Exhausted, fatigued after days of struggle, a mountaineer decided to give up and head back to base camp. I'll never make it he thought so just as well get some hot soup. And the weather's turning worse. All the way back down he justified his choice to tun back. At dinner parties he told the tale of how he was forced back by storms and bad weather. It was the right thing to do. "I can always come back another time." He said.

Years later the arthritis has ended his climbing and he always wished he'd gone back and had another go. What he didn't know, back there on the mountain, is that the summit was right around the bend in front of him. Another 2 or 3 minutes and he'd have got a world class Selfie and all the accompanying bragging rights.

You get the moral of the story. You never know what's around the corner yet we spend so much time avoiding the unknown - which might be awesome. That's the thing with the unknown - it's unknown! This is just one reason why I love tumbling along back roads, just to see what's around the next corner and trying hard to get lost. Which is actually pretty difficult what with phones and Google maps in our pockets. Personally I prefer asking someone the way. (unfortunately few folks know the way any more because they use phones and Google Maps and Sat navs all the time.)

Anyway I digress from the photography. I had no idea this pretty little bridge was just around the corner. To be honest I was getting a bit worried about what to photograph for you. Then BOOM - there it was. 

Autumn Bridge

Effort in always equals results out. So walk around, see what things look like from various angles. Off camera I fell arse over tit in that tangle of brambles! But hey - so what...

When you find the place think about how you want your photo to look. More sky in the composition? Maybe less? What focal length will best contribute to the look and feel you want? How bright or dark do you want it? All this good stuff tells you the camera settings that'll make the image yours.It's not rocket science. It's facing the unknown. Well so is rocket science.. ah bugger it. Move on...

As we rode further towards the mysterious destination (which I'd already published on the thumbnail etc 🙄 ) I thought we had a better than average chance of a cracker of a sunset to photograph. Sun lowering and pinky oranges starting to caress the clouds bottoms - nice! And all the while the Thunderbird rumbling through the most beautiful back road countryside. I'm loving making these videos.

As so often happens shooting Landscape, a band of horizon cloud got between the sun and us. But hey - it was all good learning. About the location, what to do next time. Maybe to ride round the other side of Stonehenge and buy a ticket so we can go inside the fence.

None the less, we got a couple of good ones. Here's my favourite as it came out the camera as a jpeg - and another of the same image which I made myself from the RAW. 

 

From the camera - and from me

So why and I showing you this raw file re-touchy stuff? Because I don't want you to be disappointed if you don't quite get what you want. Like I said in the video, cameras see light differently to us. They can only make an average 'guesstimate' of what it should look like. We on the other hand know what it looked like - and felt like to be there and we can bring that to life in post production.

If you're in the 'get it right in the camera brigade' I salute you. You MUST get it right in the camera or you'll never ever get a good final image. Digitally or on film. Once we did 'post' in a darkroom, now we use software. I have an admittedly aged course about post production in Lightroom. The fundamentals are still exactly the same. Post work is the same as camera work, it's not about the gadgets in the software - it's about you.

Post isn't for fixing things that went wrong. It's where we polish. You really do have to get it right in camera. If you're not 100% confident with that please come enrol on my 4 week online Masterclass In Photography. If you are and would like to know more about post production in Lightroom Classic CC - have a look at 7 Steps To Perfect Pictures. It even comes with a free work-flow course so you get Lightroom set up right and make your life easy.

Anyway, time for me to go do other stuff. Hope the weather's good over next few days so i can go do some more 'Photo Biking'.

Thank you for your support. See you next time.