Onegav

I couldnt wait, so tonight on my way home from work I took a detour and went to have a look for the Frodsham Caves. When I left work, I had a quick look on Google to see if I could find the caves location, I did, and I also learnt a little more about the location.

One thing I wanted to find out was what the access was like, and that question was answered by the statement on one web site “the site is on private land”. No matter I thought, some of the photographs showed the area looked nice from afar, so I might not need to get close anyway; although I really liked the photographs from inside the caves!

As it turned out, the detour took me down some very rural counrty lanes, and I cant help but glance down every track and through every gap in the hedge rows.

More than one occasion saw me stop the car and reverse, to get a better look at intersting stuff and views. Then, one such “headge row gap glance” had me stopped in my tracks altogether!

The view was awesme, the sky incredible, the clouds moody and, it was topped off by shafts of light coming down and a plume of smoke going up, with a lone fence post in the foreground. I could not help but take a photograph, or eight.

Unfortunatley, even though I tried my best, I couldnt quite bring the scene out during the edit, as I saw it in the real world. I’m not ure why, but even though I used exposure bracketing for all the shots, used both my 70-300mm and 18-55mm to get a range of images at different focal lengths, they just don’t portray the majesty of what I actually saw.

I guess if I spent a decent amount of time on just one of the images, and really pulled out the elemetns I want, then I might be able to make something more of it, who knows, maybe I’ll go back to the RAW files again in the future and see what I can do.

Learnings – I’m not sure what I got wrong today, and, maybe I’m being over critical of myself, I’m not sure. But, the main thing I wanted to portray was the mood in the sky with those shafts of light and the focal point of the smoke plume. I think because of that, it meant I struggled to pull definition out of the hills and the tress, and the very distant mountains.

I think the composition is nice, with the smoke balanced against the fence post, but there is something not quite “poping” for me. Its a little frustrating, but at the same time its got my grey matter doing over time, which is always a good thing!

After I took these shots, I did carry on to the location of the caves, which took me down some very narrow lanes. I couldn’t see any footpaths to explore, but, now I know its location (and its only 12 miles from home) I will definately be there again looking for somewhere to park, and to do a bit of exploring on foot.

I might even have another go at capturing the view here, if the light drops right and that smoke is there again.