It seemed surreal to me that the cow was more interested in me than in the hulking smokey factory just behind it but then I guess it saw the factory every day of the week whereas I was something new.
The factory produces lime for the steel industry and it's owned by Corus who are Europe's second largest steel manufacturer. It is located on the edge of England's most beautiful national park - 'The Lake District'
Like what you see here and are interested in photographic composition?.....the blog section of my website now has a complete set of 5 articles covering my personal approach to the subject: Ian Bramham Photography - Blog
For purchasing high quality archival prints of any of these photos you can send me an email by clicking here or by going to my website Ian Bramham - Fine Art Photography where prices are listed in the gallery sections under each individual photo.
@Josh: Thanks Josh!....there's no big secret really other than lots of practice and looking at the work of lots of other great photographers (look up the fine art photographer Michael Kenna to see where I get big chunks of my own inspiration from!)
If you are interested there's some links on my website to articles I've written which explain my thoughts on photographic composition: http://www.ianbramham.com/section255881.html
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Apart from that, I listed out my workflow in a reply to a question similar to yours recently....this is it: My post processing skills are actually very basic and the only things I know about Photoshop are what I've picked up over the last 2 years or so from participating on the D40-D90 forum at DPReview from members Ian Smith, John Leech (Jkjond ), John Clinch and Alex Bazeos (Alexring)
Over the last year I've gradually established a workflow that seems to work for me most of the time:
1.
I shoot in RAW and expose the initial photo using the ETTR histogram method (there's plenty of explanations on the web for this method)
2.
I open the RAW file in Capture NX2 to make any fine adjustments of exposure or white balance.
3.
I then save this file as a 16 bit Tiff and work on it further in Photoshop CS3 (we had a spare licence at work which is why I use CS3!). I find that for B&W conversions in particular, where contrast needs to be added, that the 16 bit Tiffs hold their quality much better than the 8 bit Jpegs that I used to post process; in particular, it minimises the risk of posterization or banding of tone that you can get when you push the contrast in Jpegs.
4.
I use layers but not in any kind of complex way and 99.9% of the processing I do is the kind of thing that could be done in a traditional darkroom with film and prints: I adjust contrast using the 'curves' tool to areas that I select with the lasso tool and I occasionally use Photoshops 'dodge' and burn' tools.
5.
I'm not very good at all at using 'masks' so if there's something that looks a bit tricky I take it back into NX2 and use that software's excellent 'U' point technology which is really intuitive to use and excellent at auto masking.
It's true that pure technical post processing skills are important but it's what you do with those skills that is the key. The best advice I've ever got concerning photography was 2 years ago from John Leech the first time I posted photos at DPReview (There's a link to his Aminus3 site at the top of the page) - he told me that my processing of photos at the time was taking too much of a documentary approach and that I should look to make more of a statement.
He told me that the best photography conveys emotion and I think he's right.
Find a subject that you are passionate about, photograph it to the best of your ability in the most interesting light available and post process it in a way that attempts to convey to the viewer your feelings about the subject of your photo.
I hope that helps a little!
@gavin hart: No problem Gavin...I'm pleased it was of some use!
16 bit Tiffs aren't the complete answer to the problem of posterization during post processing but they do hold up much better than 8 bit Jpegs. By the way - just in case you don't already know, posterization and banding can also be hidden by the adittion of noise or simulated film grain.
@Pavan Kaul: :-)
I always knew that one day I'd be attractive to the ladies!
@Jason Kravitz: Hi Jason!.....I never bought any of the Pink Floyd albums but since taking this photo I've been told that they had one with a cow on the cover and one with a factory. This view was certainly surreal enough for a Pink Floyd album.
NIKON D40
1/60 second
F/8.0
ISO 200
28 mm (35mm equiv.)