CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

'The best lens for landscapes is a wide angle', how many times has this advice been given?  I give it myself and on the whole I agree with this, but this is not a hard fact.  Any lens is good for landscapes and a medium to long telephoto lens is also very useful and I use my 55-200mm (80-300mm equivalent) on almost every photography trip.  A telephoto lens isolates elements of the landscape and it also compresses the perspective, bringing items in the composition closer together.  For example in the shot at the top of this page of Barns Ness lighthouse, Bass Rock can be seen to the left of the lighthouse.  In this shot it looks like The Bass is just beyond the headland when in fact it is a few miles away out in the Firth of Forth.   This 'stacking' of the different elements is highlighted when the light is slightly behind the subject as in the shot below of Lismore Lighthouse in the Sound of Mull. The lighthouse is dark, the shoreline in the middle ...

Last night we had some more snow in Grantham but this morning the thaw had started to set in, so I headed out to the Vale of Belvoir to capture some last images of the snow before it melted away. I headed up to Woolsthorpe by Belvoir to take some images of the village but decided to stop at Denton on the way to get some shots of St Andrew's Church for my records.  The sun was still quite low, as it always is at this time of year. This created a scene with deep contrast and I has to be careful with the exposure. After 30 minutes and several shots in the bag I headed to Woolsthorpe and trudged up the hill in the snow to get some shots across the valley towards Belvoir Castle on the opposite side. Finally I headed the other side of the castle to get some shots of the snowy fields and also some of the castle.  While I was there I saw a Red Kite soaring overhead and a quick change of lens resulted in some nice images of this beautiful bird of prey. I headed back ...