Today I got a great opportunity to go up in a cherry picker about 40 feet up to take some photos of a friends farm from above. This was my first attempt at a HDR image combining two images exposed at two different ends of the exposure. Im happy with it, see what you think :
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The rest of the images I took are available here
 
 
So I arrived home tuesday at around 8:30pm and went straight to bed!


The trip overall I thoroughly enjoyed, Its the first time I have endured proper hiking. We departed Coventry at 6:30am heading north for the Lake District, we travelled light with only necessary kit being packed. When your hiking up a mountain the last thing you want is a really heavy backpack on you.


 The journey there took us around 4 hours which wasn't bad at all. Once into the Lake District your driving becomes at lot more interactive as your changing gear every 30 seconds as you climb yet another hill, once we found the site we pulled up and went to book our pitch at Castlerigg Farm, we were turned away as they didn't accept single sex parties due to an "incident" on the site. So from there we ventured to Castlerigg Hall who had the same theory, our next chance was a campsite called Dalebottom, which really wasn't a campsite at all it was a field on a farm with 5 caravans, but at least he agreed for us to stay!

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So the tent was pitched and we set off straight away to our first hike... Spout Force, which is a 10 mile hike over about 4 hours if your quick, so because we would be stopping to take photos we said compensated for maybe 5 or 6 hours. We set off at 1200 hours with slight northern wind but no rain.


At first you hit the pain barrier and trust me it hits you like a hammer hitting you in the nuts but after the first two hours you start to enjoy yourself you settle into the walk and you start to appreciate the views like this one:
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Looking up at the peak your about to climb it feels intimidating and monstrous but the incredible feeling you get when you reached the peak with 50mph winds rushing past your ears and the vast views its amazing. The weather worsened once we were at 1600 feet and to get the cameras out these conditions would have been pretty stupid so unfortunately we have no photos from the highest peak.


This break was not only great for photos but also gave us a great sense of freedom. 

The hike overall took 6 and a half hours over 12 miles. The behind the scenes film will be online soon!


More pictures online here
 
 
But when I Popped out to the country today to take some shots of some horses, I come back with some lovely shots. I'm just trying to build up my portfolio at the moment so anything I can take a picture of I will. I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of horses, so I used a 300mm Lense to capture these, this left enough room between the horse  and me lol. Any how heres the first sample.
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Even though this picture shows an intrusive fence line, I still think the overall image turned out rather nice.
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The sun started to set just behind the hill so I upper the shutter speed to get a more silhouette effect.
This has obviously been heavily photoshopped, but is one of my favourite of the bunch!
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Where's John Wayne when you need him?
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Horses use iPods too you know!