In this video, I visit the bluebell railway for another 15 minute photo challenge.
AdoramaTV presents 'Take and Make Great Photography' with Gavin Hoey.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching AdoramaTV, brought to you by at Adorama, the camera
store that has everything for us
photographers and today you join me in the heart of the Sussex countryside at
the fantastic Bluebell Railway for another 15 minute photo challenge.
Now, I'm here on a gorgeous, sunny day and this is just a fantastic location for
photography. I've had a little wander around. There are so many things to photograph.
15 minutes, it's just not fair. There's not enough time. So let's start the clock,
let's get going, and I think my first shot, well, a nice, wide panorama of this scene. So
today I'm using the Olympus Pen F camera and I've got a 12-40 mm zoom, just a
general-purpose zoom for my panoramas. I like to shoot in manual mode. I like to shoot in the widest
angle lens which is the 12mm lens. Let's just take a meter reading from the middle
and my camera is telling me f11
ISO 200, 1/160th of a second, dialed into manual. I get a
picture of my hand so I know the next sequence of shots are all part of the
panorama. And around we go. I like to do my panoramas nice and big, 180 degrees
or wider, and you never really know what you get with a panorama, which is all
kind of part the fun of doing them. OK, let's wander around the station, see what else we can find.
OK, well look,
as a photographer it's hard to resist a little bit of texture and quite a sort of graphic shot
as well so I'm going to switch back to aperture priority mode
and we're just going to get a shot of the texture here.
Writing in photography. I love the font on here, the text on here, we've got some
nice color, a little bit of peeling paint and a diagonal line as well with the handle.
So this is the subway between the various platforms and it's a great space.
It's wonderful sound as well. I think this could make a good shot. Let's just take a
grab shot like this, just as we're walking through. Now, whilst that's OK, I
reckon there's a better shot and the easy way to make this better is to get down
a bit lower, rather than shooting at eye height, I just kneel down. I change the
perspective of the shot so now I've got converging lines from the four corners of my scene.
Just moving down a little bit further makes a complete difference to the shot.
I like this, we've got a couple of the old signs. There's loads of these old, slightly weathered signs here
and I like the effect. The thing I think it's lacking, it just need somebody in the end
it just needs a bit of human interest. I'm just going to hang on and wait for someone just to walk
down or up the steps. Perfect, here we go. Fantastic. I'm just going to snap away.
Wonderful.
It's nice to be back out into the sunshine again but sunny weather can cause problems, so often on
a really sunny day I'm actually looking for shots in the shade and we've got a nice little
area to shoot in here. I think there's two or three shots here. I love the red. I mean photographers
and red, we're drawn to red, and also a little bit of decaying on the sign, so
let's just grab a shot of that. That's really rather nice.
Superb.
And then we've got a whole bunch of different boxes
and storage and these have all seen a little bit of use. I like
this one. This one really appeals to me. There's sort of a rust color on there, so let's
grab a shot of that. Now I think we'll do a wide shot whilst I'm here as well. There's a great view down
the platforms, back to the ticket office and there's loads of little signs and loads
of texture. I'm going to switch to HDR mode for this, not because I particularly want an HDR image,
it's simply because the camera dynamics means that the bright sky and the
deep shadows underneath some of these roofs may not expose properly. So, let's do an HDR shot nice and
wide. I'm actually going to come back a bit further. Now, again, changing my shooting height is a good idea
so rather than shooting from my standing height, let's get lower.
Let's get right down here.
Let's get really low. Let's get the the flicky foldy screen out, make use of that, you get
right down onto the floor level.
So, we've got a great bunch of pictures but for the picture that I really want, I want to have a steam
train in it. This is a heritage railway and that makes sense, doesn't it? Now,
one is due any moment now so I'm going to wander down to the other end of the
platform, wait for the train and then we'll keep going and get the last few minutes
of this 15 minute challenge with a train at the station.
So, in the distance I can hear a train approaching. The idea is I'm going to get some
pictures as it comes up the tracks, here it comes. Then I'm going to dash down to the other end, get some
pictures of the engine itself. OK this could be a bit frantic because it's only in the station for a
couple of minutes. But that's perfect because we've only got a couple of minutes left of this challenge.
Here we go.
It's coming in backwards.
We're going to snap away here, a couple of minutes with the train in the platform.
Again, dynamic range through the roof.
This is where HDR quickly comes in. I can quickly can press a button to get HDR going.
HDR doesn't work well on moving subjects so I need to be quick.
Fantastic. Really great stuff.
15 minutes of photography, well, that's really not enough time at the Bluebell Railway.
You've got to spend a couple of hours there and that's just one station alone.
There were countless pictures. However, I got quite a good number of shots, I've got a nice range
of pictures to choose to edit, and the one I'm going to use is one of the ones I shot down in the underpass, in
that lovely, gloomy, dark...well, it wasn't that gloomy and dark but that's where Photoshop comes in.
Let's have a look.
So this is the shot. I've got the chap walking past me, it all looks quite moody.
But there's more mood to come out of this picture and I'm going to create that mood using
the graduated filter.
So let me just knock the exposure right the way down, minus four stops. I'm going to drag a gray grad filter
What I'm looking to do is just create this ray of light. There is a little ray
of light there but I'm looking for something more dramatic. So that's one , let's go to the new
option and repeat it on the other side. And we'll just drag these around now they're on the
screen. I'm just going to try to create that feeling of a ray of light because it adds to the
mood. And that works OK, but of course I've darkened everything from this green line
back at a minus four stop so I need to bring some of that detail back. There's a few
ways you could do it but because I'm in the graduated filter, there is an option
here to use the brush as well as the graduated filter to brush in extra bits
at the same exposure or remove them from the image. I'm going to use the remove, let's pump up
the flow to maximum and we'll just bring back a few areas where it's a little bit
brighter just so we bring that area back through. It's just so it looks a little bit more realistic.
Now I'm happy with that but the graduated filter isn't the only local adjustment here
inside of Photoshop, or remember, of course, it's exactly the same inside of Lightroom too. There's also the
radial filter and my favorite, the adjustment brush. That's what I'm going to use next.
So, for the adjustment brush, I just find it at the top, there it is
and I'm going to change a few settings here. I'm going to set everything back to zero,
but add in some clarity. So I think we want a little bit more clarity because I think clarity
works well. That kind of works nice and that just brings up a little bit more
brightness on that sign too, and I may just add an extra new brush and a little
bit more exposure and we'll just dab in a few areas of brighter exposure just to complete the
effect and maybe just a little bit more over here. It may be just a wee bit dark. Now I've done
that left side. In fact that left side, I can just go back to my graduated filter and bring that back up,
just so it's not quite so hard. There you go. So there's still a little bit of fine tuning to do,
a few things to clone out, a bit of
tidying up, but there it is. My final picture completed.
15 minutes have come and gone
and we got some brilliant shots here. I'd like to thank the Bluebell railway for
allowing us to come and shoot on their platforms and photograph their trains.
They've been incredibly helpful to make this video possible. Now, if you want to see more
videos from myself and the other amazing presenters right here on AdoramaTV, you
know what you've got to do, you've got to click on the subscribe button. I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.