Michael Scott

I took my camera to London on Monday. I was in the big smoke for a meeting with a client and I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to get some pictures. The combination of the heat, lugging around my laptop, and being in my best suit didn’t prove conducive to photography in the end, so I ended up with a lone picture of some bikes.

I did snap a few good images from the moving train window on my way back to Leeds though. As the train sped northwards, I was sat on the left, the west, side of the train,  gazing into a low sun. North of Peterborough we passed through some low hills with vast golden fields dotted with trees. The light was gorgeous.

I used a very small aperture to try to get a long exposure  directly into the light of the sinking sun. My hope was to get the foreground trees as motion-blurred as possible while turning the golden fields into a gorgeous smudge yet keeping the far away clouds as sharp as possible. I think I mainly achieved what I wanted, in this and the other two images in the set. (Number 2 and Number 3)

There is a lot of post processing going on here. The main one (after the straightening of the horizon) is the tint. I used Aperture’s Colour Monochrome tool with an off-yellow colour at 46% opacity. This darkens the sky and enhances the golden field while keeping the greens more or less green. I appreciate that it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I think the end result is a pleasing, painterly image with motion; it’s almost Impressionist, and I love the effect.

What do you think, reader?

(The tint was mainly inspired by this image of Loch Lomond by Greg.)