I like the weirdness of this second shot.

I presume this is falling water. It is the best of the two. The shallow DoF does give this picture some nice depth.

First is a fine composition, the sky makes it. I might have lifted the shadows on the main 3 sunflowers a touch.
Ah! Pizza Olivia - I'll get down there one day. Good mystery in that shot.

Such good animal portraits! Absolutely love these, fine pictures but also very humorous.

Really interesting stuff. This is my favourite, you're certainly right about it being a dangerous working environment.
And not much chance of a water wheel being effective these days.

I think they fit the bill admirably. I like them both.

Good to hear. I eat very healthily but could probably drink a bit less.

That book is a masterwork! So important to document a way of life. Very strong photography, it drips Italian atmosphere. That football stadium looks to be a deathtrap.

Sad and poignant. The local characters are brilliantly captured, and the tree shots reminded me of those wonderful images you made years ago of the flooded poplars along the Po. Just this week I came across the winning landscape image in the Hasselblad Masters competition that featured those trees.
www.rohanreilly.com/

I love both of these. The diagonals in the first contrasting with the sunflower field make for a very strong composition.
I was hoping for a crescent shadow opportunity during the eclipse, but we had a whisp of cloud at just the wrong moment ... Next time perhaps 😉

This one is beautiful. Close examination reveals some amazing textrures and light effects.

Absolutely a masterwork. Brings back memories of N Italy back in the day. Really important social history there. (Especially love the ladies poring over the funeral notices 😁)

A Recent Round Up

It's been way too hot here in the UK for me to get out much over recent weeks, although I did manage to drag myself out at the last minute to make some underwhelming pictures of the partial eclipse, so I've bulked this set out with a collection of other images from the last few weeks.

A Sunset Walk to Black Coppice

This set came from a pleasant evening in the middle of July. I'd had a wander part way onto the moors and timed it so that I ended up at the Black Coppice quarries for sunset.

Z8 + 24-70 f/2.8S + 70-180 f/2.8

The Goit

From the car park at White Coppice, the path to the moors crosses The Goit, a canal connecting the Roddlesworth reservoirs to those at Anglezarke. I've taken a number of variants of this shot over the years, but when the conditions are nice I always like to have another go.

Grass At Sunset

After my walk onto the moors I returned to Black Coppice and while scouting about for sunset locations the backlit grass caught my eye.

Sunset At Black Coppice

I shot a number of variants of sunset from the southern quarry but I think this one is my favourite from that evening.

Afterglow

A bonus shot of the Mormon temple taken from the same location as the light was fading.

My Longest Moorland Walk in a While

With the lingering hot weather here I've not really been motivated to head out onto the moors, but on this particular day the temperature had dropped a bit and I decided to try something different.

I started by heading for the moors through Brinscall Woods, using the stile that exits the upper edge of the woods at the Liptrott's Farm ruins to reach the moors. From there I followed the main moorland path all the way up to the summit of Great Hill and then, not wanting to retrace my steps, struck out across the open moor towards Solomon's Temple, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare due to how high the vegetation has got on these little used paths. I even ended up falling into a ditch I hadn't seen at one point, that was fun. Still, apart from that it was an enjoyable walk, visiting some of my favourite moorland locations.

X-T50 + 16-55 f/2.8

The Top Of The Woods

Following the path that runs along the top edge of the moors.

To The Moors

I've always thought that these trees mark the former location of Liptrott's Farm, but some recent research revealed that the actual ruins are just inside the boundary of the woods, near the stile that leads to the open moors.

The View From Old Man's Hill

Having summited Great Hill, I ended up wading through the heather across Old Man's Hill. I'm not sure where the name comes from and there's not really much of a hill to speak of, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly well known route, so following the path was somewhat challenging as it was very overgrown. It is potentially quite treacherous when it's like this as there are a number of streams and ditches crossing this area, including the one I stepped into that was hidden in the heather. At least that turned out to be a dry one and I didn't hurt myself as I half fell into it. This picture was taken somewhere in the midst of the heather and grass on Old Man's Hill looking towards Darwen Moor, with its enigmatic Jubilee Tower on the northern edge.

Sheep

The path from Old Man's Hill finally descends into a flat area near the ruins of New Temple farm. This is a strangely barren area that I believe was used as a decoy site during the war, but these sheep clustering by these weatherbeaten Hawthorns caught my eye. One flaw with the X-T50 is its film simulation dial. I thought this was something of a gimmick when I bought the camera, but I've ended up using it quite a bit, so I don't really mind it. The flaw though, is how easy it is to turn. I'd somehow caught it and ended up shooting in some random film sim without noticing. Not a major problem for me as I always shoot raw, so I can change it again in the edit and on this occasion, I thought the randomly selected effect suited the image, so I left it that way.

Another Lap of The Nab

The next day I was back on The Nab again (as it's the closest bit of real countryside to home, making it ideal for early morning walks) hoping to see the Kestrels out and about, so took the Z8 and 100-400 4.5-5.6S.

Distant Deer

A briefly spotted Deer on the other side of a field.

Incoming

I spotted one of the female Kestrels in their usual location, but she didn't stick around too long. She was definitely keeping a close eye on me as she flew around the area.

Precarious Perch

She didn't hang around too long, but briefly landed in this tree before flying away.

A Robin By The Path

Spotted on the path that leads up to Nab Wood.

Scruffy Robin

The same Robin. I was gradually creeping closer, taking shots along the way until flew off.

The Partial Eclipse

I wasn't going to bother photographing the eclipse. I didn't have any suitable solar filters and it was too late to try and get one, but as 6PM rolled around I decided I should make an effort. The time of maximum occlusion was around 7ish here, so I figured I had plenty of time to scramble to the top of Black Coppice, which is one of my favourite local sunset photography locations, and see if I could find a worthwhile composition.

As I don't have proper solar photography filters, I decided I didn't want to risk my best cameras, but I knew I'd probably need to crop in, so I dusted off the old Z7 and paired it with my best lens, the 24-70 f/2.8S for wide shots and the still decent 70-180 f/2.8 for telephoto. I could have taken the 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S, but it's pretty heavy and I was already sweating just sat in the house, so I didn't fancy lugging it up the steep paths of Black Coppice and instead I settled for the shorter lens because it's so much lighter. For filters, I figured stacking my ND filters would work for short handheld shots, although despite bringing along a lightweight tripod, I didn't fancy leaving the camera on it and pointing at the sun for any length of time, so I ended up not using it.

The road leading up to White Coppice was packed with parked cars and I was lucky to find a space. I certainly wouldn't have if I'd waited much longer before coming out. The scramble to the top was horrendous. I'd misjudged just how hot it was and my beta blocked heart was already racing by the time I reached the bottom of the coppice path. I took my time and scrambled up in sections with long pauses between each, but despite that, my heart somehow managed to hit 140BPM, which is way faster than it ever gets these days (usually topping out around 120 on a brisk walk). No chest pain, but I was exhausted when I got to the top and had to sit down for a few minutes to recover before heading over to the quarry.

Sun Worshippers of White Coppice

As mentioned in the intro, I wasn't alone in thinking White Coppice would be a good spot to view this from. As such, there were groups of people dotted all over White Coppice to watch the spectacle. Where I was on Black Coppice was much quieter, I only spotted four groups of people while I was up there. I don't think the general public really visit Black Coppice, the number of "corrections" I get when I post photos from Black Coppice ("don't you mean White Coppice?") on social media seems to back that up.

Close But No Cigar

This is the best shot I got of the eclipse itself. This was taken handheld at 180mm with stacked 82mm ND8 and ND64 filters perched on the end of the lens via a huge array of step up rings screwed into the 62mm front. It's been cropped and subsequently upscaled in Topaz.

Partial Eclipse From Black Coppice

I took a number of shots where I tried to capture the wider environment and still show the partially covered sun. This was the most successful. Again, handheld and just using the ND64 IIRC, it's from a three shot bracket with -2 stop intervals. Using Capture One's HDR merge obliterated the sun, so I ended up having to manually composite the 0EV and -4EV shots. The only tools I have to do this with these days is Affinity Photo on the Mac and it was a struggle. Still better than using GIMP, but it's no Photoshop where it would have been a doddle. That said, the end result isn't too bad, even if it did take half a dozen attempts to get the blended masking between layers right because there's no way to preview it live.

It's worth noting the cloud just below the sun in this picture. On a day where the sky was mostly clear of clouds, it's just typical that wispy clouds would start to build up around 6:30PM and one would plonk itself right on top of the sun as the eclipse reached its maximum. Fortunately they moved just enough to get a handful of pictures where you could see what was going on.

It is really contrasty and a great composition!

This is a great set of photos, I truly enjoyed them. The first piazza shot is the crown of this set, but the others are great too. Thank you so much for making them and sharing with us.

My chef (he is an Italian) suggested to sell a pizza with fried potato chips ! I am not fancy of this idea but I love pizza fritta !!!

I find them scary. When I took photos of a farmer on his farm with his cows they were enormous and made me feel a bit uneasy.

The birth, glory and death of industrialisation!

Yes, it has been too hot everywhere to get out and about.

I rather like this scruffy Robin.

Beautiful work. The first has such nice light that it really makes me want to be there.
And the last captures that weird gloom of eclipse very well.

Nooo! Tell your chef he is wrong :)

Excellent photos on the thread. Very interesting, all of them. I am going to take a closer look! Here is shot from last week along the tracks of a local rail yard... under smoky skies from the wild fires across the mountains in Eastern Washington:

Amazing how long the train and its wagons are. Those engines must be incredibly powerful.