A winter's day walk near Castle Eden in County Durham can bring up some interesting photo opportunities. Deviating from the Hart to Haswell walkway, there is a public footpath that snakes its way through farmers fields and joins the Hart to Haswell walkway to the Wingate Walking Trails.
The tree on the right is one of several interesting trees that guard this small rustic footpath that goes slightly uphill from the Hart to Haswell walkway.
The image below is looking downhill towards the Hart to Haswell walkway. I captured a cyclist negotating the slight twists and stones found in the path.
The cars in the distance are driving on the A19 road, which stretches for 124 miles from Seaton Burn to Doncaster.
I used a tilt-shift function found in the camera, therefore the blur you see is created when the image is taken. It is an interesting effect.
When studying the image, I like the shapes but I feel there is too much green and very little other colour. I therefore aimed at a Black & White conversion.
The cyclist is the main focal point and therefore kept the colour of his hi viz coat. I felt that green did not contrast well against the black & white landscape, therefore I change the colour of the cyclists jacket to orange to make it stand out.
In the above image, I boosted the contrast and also extended the blur effect slightly more. I also warmed up the black & white tones a little. I like this image but sometimes when doing image editing, you lose sight of converting to black & white not only impacts on the colours and textures, but also the composition.
All it takes is a suggestion from someone else to say 'oh! I should have thought of that'. That is why it is important to share your work with others and open yourself up to suggestion and critique, it helps you develop your skill.
It was suggested that I crop out most of the landscape as it is not really doing much, there is nothing going on. I therefore decided to crop out the landscape.
This is the final composition, I cropped out most of the landscape and straight away, the focal point is more on the cylist. I also cropped out some of the tree on the left.
Sometimes it is worth experimenting with the crop tool, even after all of the editing that has been done. In lightroom cropping is done non-destructively, which gives you the flexibility to experiment.
