It's Good to Share...
Edward Russell has become the third NDPS member to have a photo selected to be Amateur Photographer’s Picture of the week (Tuesday 25th July 2023 edition) so far this year.
To take part in the competition readers simply have to post their photos on AP’s social media channels from which the editorial team selects their weekly favourites.
Misty Hare by Edward Russell
I am fortunate to live in a very rural part of South Norfolk surrounded by farmland which provides a mixed bag of wildlife to photograph. I have recently been going to a local place to photograph hares both in the evenings and early mornings. Walking my usual route on this particular morning it was a bit misty and had not provided a worthwhile siting of the hares.
Returning back along my route I saw this hare, so I slowly dropped down to the ground, lying on the damp grass. The hare had just spotted me and as I slowly pointed the camera it “stood up” on its hind legs - click and in the bag- well no click as I only ever shoot silent shutter! Hares often stand up like this when they sense some concern, it enables them to alert other hares nearby, get a better view and plot their escape route if needed.
The mist, low angle and surrounding grass framed the hare nicely. Not much processing was needed mainly bit of a crop to place it looking more into the frame.
I shoot with the OM Systems OM1 with the 150-400 lens. I shoot 95% of the time handheld and manual exposure. Setting for this picture were ISO 250, shutter at 1/500, Aperture of 4.5 and focal length of 356mm. Processed with Affinity Photo.
Previously selected AP picture of the week this year have been:
The Eye of The Beholder by Bill Daniels
I got myself to Spittal Beach on the Northumberland Coast when a low tide coincided with the sunrise. I hoped that this combination would reveal the famous banks of sandstone at this location with some nice directional light to showcase the form, texture and patterns of these amazing rocks.
The sunrise was actually pretty good, although I was silently cursing it as what I really wanted was soft, gentle diffused light for the shots I had in mind. For a few minutes the rising sun painted the orange sandstone so vividly that the colours looked really unnatural and almost unpleasant.
Fortunately (and I can't believe I'm saying this!) the sun soon disappeared into a low bank of cloud, and I could start focussing on Plan A. I soon found an interesting piece of blue/grey sandstone with bands of orange, featuring wave-sculpted curves and a prominent crack across it. I set up my tripod and decided to focus-stack multiple images to maintain sharpness throughout the frame. Looking at the first few images on the back of the camera I felt that the image was missing a focal point to hold the viewer's attention. I found a jet-black pebble in a nearby tide pool and plopped it into the middle of the rock and found that it seemed to work quite well.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but it looks very much like a watchful eye. Back home, I re-cropped the image to further simplify the scene and created the final version which I shared on social media with the hashtag #appicoftheweek.
Thorpe Bay by Terry Newman
Back in February, I was thrilled to receive a message via Instagram that one of my photos that I had tagged had caught the eye of the editorial team at Amateur Photographer magazine, and they wanted to feature it in one of their Pic of the Week feature that they do in each weekly edition of the magazine.
I was invited to send a high resolution copy of the image with approximately 50 words about it alongside the technical details of how it was captured. It felt right to give a nod to the Norwich & District Photographic Society (NDPS) for whom, if it wasn’t for their hard work arranging club trips, I would definitely not have visited this location on my own. I wasted no time in getting a second edit done, revisiting the image, ensuring it was a little brighter than the iPad edit I did for social media in the knowledge it was going to print. I also double checked very stringently that there were no sensor dust spots, or other distracting blemishes but thankfully it was pretty clean as the moment it was taken.
When the magazine came out, I was so proud to see something publicly recognised and in print- I bought several editions! As it happens, the image is the gift that keeps on giving with it achieving third place in the print section of the club's Image of the Year competition. Driving out in foggy icy conditions at 4am that morning last Winter to meet the landscape group in Essex was clearly worth it..!