Hello and welcome to another day of landscape photography today the weather
is not very nice and as you know that does not put me off. So today what I'm gonna do is
make the most of the conditions and go to a place that suits the sort of
overcast darker skies so I'm going to head up to a Aysgarth Falls and aim for a
little bit of waterfall and woodland photography.
Come with me.
Okay so I'm set up for the first shot of the day and I'm gonna go through this
quickly because it is very very noisy as you might be able to hear I've got a
very simple shot with the camera set up on the tripod down here about as close
to the water as I dare get. Just look how fast moving that is. It is particularly
impressive with a lot of water in there today. So composition wise all I'm doing
is using the waterfall here just to lead you round into the trees behind me
and then there's a rock just there that's sort of forming a composition with
that on the bottom left-hand cross of the rule of thirds and it's just making
a really nice little composition to get me going for the day. Now,
settings wise, it's pretty important for this shot
some people like long exposures on waterfalls and I am one of those people
so what I'm doing I have a six stop ND filter on the front of the lens along
with a polarizer, particularly just to darken the top of the waterfall here and
take the sheen off that I and then have a shutter speed of about 1.6 seconds
which is enough to smooth out this fast-moving water
I am also bracketing because the sky above is quite bright as is actually the
water at the bottom of the Falls where it's all white
so very simple shot but it's gonna be a nice start to the day I've got some of
Autumnal colours on the trees as well so it's gonna work really
nicely and I'm happy with how that's looking right at the start of the day
I'm gonna capture one more just to be sure because the sky was a bit bright in
the last shot. It's overcast again now which is perfect conditions for this
shot. Good start let's have a look
So second shot of the day is set up and I don't do a lot of woodland, despite
growing up in the woods near my home in the North York Moors but it's not
something I particularly photographed that often partly because I don't like
getting out of bed and the best time for woodland photography its first thing
in the morning on a nice misty or foggy morning but I don't have that here today
my attention has been drawn towards this tree behind me here because as I was
walking through this small wood it's quite dark this sort of thick canopy is
still there but the autumnal colors are starting to come through and the yellow
leaves on this tree just sort of struck me with a nice dark background so I
wanted to capture it it's also got a fairly interesting trunk to the tree as
well so I'm using that as my composition. It's not your sort of normal technique
or composition that I'm using because quite often you want things leading you
into the frame to focus your attention into the center or towards the top of
the frame but I'm not doing that with this image everything is kind of leading
out of the frame from the bottom in those leaves are just doing that I'm
producing that kind of shape so it's slightly unusual composition but I think
it's gonna work with those nice yellow leaves contrasted against the dark
background so that's really what I'm going for
settings wise it's also quite important with this shot because it's still a bit
windy in this small wood so I've had to up the ISO just a little bit so I can
get the shutter speed up so then freeze those leaves in the wind
I'm currently at 1/250th of a second which is about enough to freeze
the the movement in the in the leaves secondly I'm at iso 640 which is quite
high but this camera can quite easily deal with that and then I am at F 2.8 on
the aperture because the reason I'm doing that is I want to maximize the
blur in the background to try and really isolate this tree because the problem
you have with woodland sometimes in these kind of conditions is that you
can't actually see the tree for the wood it just kind of all blends in so by
using that F 2.8 I'm just isolating that particular tree just a little bit and
with a bit of post-processing to really enhance the contrast it should work
really nicely and those yellow leaves are gonna be front
and center in the image I'm just gonna grab that now I'm focused in on the tree
trunk, two second timer get the image and yes I am really happy with that
especially once I put it through Lightroom
I'm not gonna lie I was a little bit worried about the tripod being washed
off that rock then but I do have it set up for my third shot of the day after
the previous two shots which were a little bit tighter I wanted to find a
composition with a bit more of an open expanse to it just to sort of really
round off the feeling that this place is generated in me today and that's what I
found with this composition. I've trekked out onto these rocks, they are very slippery
and you definitely definitely would not want to fall in there today so I am
being very very careful I'm at the Lower Falls here of Aysgarth Falls and this
fall is pretty big and there is a massive amount of water coming down it
so all I'm doing at the moment is I have shot one shot already with the 17-40mm
millimeter lens on there just to give you that nice wide expanse of this scene
I've done it in two ways firstly I did it with a six stop filter to give you
that long exposure again and then I'm bracketing the shot again and it's
roughly a sort of five second exposure which is actually creating a lot of
movement in this image because the water is moving really really fast secondly
I've then done it without the six stop filter, just with the polarizer on the
polarizer is important today to take the sheen off the water so you get that nice
those nice dark areas and the nice light area where it's foaming.
Compositionally I'm using these rocks to lead you in to the waterfall and I'm
getting all the swirling water around in the bottom of the frame leading you up
into the waterfall and the trees and then there was a nice bit of blue sky
came out as well to show itself and improved the image just that little bit
more. At the moment I'm doing a second shot with the 70-200 mm lens on
there just to get me a little bit closer in to that waterfall but I don't think I
like that shot as much so I'll put both shots up let me know which one you like
best down in the comments because I would be interested I think I like the
big expanse because it tells a better story of this area today
fantastic location I've also got some of the nice Autumnal colours starting to
come into the trees and that's all just adding to the composition,
So that's typical isn't it? When I was expecting a cloudy overcast day it's
come really good at the last moment which is nice because I've captured three really
good images making the most of this waterfall and woodland landscape it's
great for overcast days and you don't need to be out towards sunset either you
can get some good stuff right in the middle of the day and that's what I've
done today I'm now gonna go and enjoy a bit of a walk find a couple of nice
places for time lapse and enjoy the rest of my day out and about here. But I hope
you've enjoyed the video I think I'm gonna have to bite the bullet soon and
get a drone because I did miss it today and we could have got some great shots
down by the river there but leave a comment down below let me know what you
think and if you haven't learned so yet please subscribe to the channel if
you've enjoyed the video and if you are subscribed hit that notification bill so
you know when my videos come out but I'll see you on another one very very
soon I'm Adam, this is First Man Photography.....
Aysgarth falls....
out!!