In Absentia – Day Three (Son of Absentia)

Carbis Bay, originally uploaded by andyskelton-a Blog a day http://andrewskelton.net.

Another shot from Cornwall, St Ives specifically (as was yesterdays), and another multi-shot panorama.  Hastily snapped, this image is comprised of 11 separate photos and was stitched together using PTGUI which was by far the best program for many years.  The original few versions of the software required users to mark identical points on photos within a set, after which the program would then chunter away for a while to produce a stitched photo.  With improvements in processing power and updates in the software, the program would analyse each photo and find the points itself which in itself was rather amazing.

Stitching is common place now and even the most lowly of graphics program has some capability built in.  I’m not sure if the ease of producing such images is why this photographic discipline has lost it’s appeal for me, whether so many people are doing it or whether I’ve been concentrating so much on flora and fauna but I haven’t created such images in at least a year. Providing the weather keeps fine, I may well have the opportunity to capture the Cornish countryside in all it’s glory, and especially the coastline.

As mentioned prior to my trip to Kenya, I have a number of graduated filters who’s primary purpose is in Landscape Photography. A grad, as they are more commonly called, is a piece of perpex, plastic or glass that is generally clear at one end but slowly (or quickly) become darked towards the other end of the filter.  When placed, in a holder, on the lens this allows the photographer to even out the contrast between a bright sky and a darker landscape to a certain extent, dependent on the strength of the filter itself (there a different grades of filter).  You can also get different coloured graduated filters, some of which you may well have seen in action.  Top Gear regularly use coloured grad filters when filming on location tests of some fancy car or other – ask yourself whether you’ve ever seen a tobacco orange coloured sky or whether the last time you saw a sunset it was purple – and then you’ll easy spot them.  Having said that – they can make for a fantastic photo – well, that’s what I’m hoping for, without any cars in sight.

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