The morning of a new era?

[David Paterson]

The UK musters its air and sea defences, in a new and uncertain world.   

[armando_m]

David, Both are fantastic, and I really like the peace of #2

[Peter Connan]

Beautiful! Especially the first!

[elsid]

I find both images excellent. Bravo David.

[elsa hoffmann]

Beautifully rendered!

[Akira]

The contrail split into two...a new-era secret weapon?! 

Love #2, a bit more foreground (forewater?) maybe?

[Mongo]

like the serenity in both of these David. #2 has the extra fascination of being an unusual mono as well

[David Paterson]

Armando and everyone who has commented, thank you so much - you are all very kind.

#2 has been very slightly cropped all round - it was shot at 200mm on my 70-200/4 and was slightly loose; needed tightening up a bit. It is possible to argue that I took a little too much off the foreground. But it's done now and there may be no going back. I whisper this, for fear of the scorn and derision that may be heaped on my head - I no longer keep raw files, unless (a) they are particularly difficult to process and (b) I am not satisfied with what was achieved so far. As soon as I have what I regard as a good raw conversion, I save a 48-bit tiff. As soon as a batch of tiffs has been backed-up, I delete the corresponding raw files. Later, I make a selection of the best 20% or s of the archived files; these get backed-up again. Actually, in the case of the boat, I am keeping 3 variants and a specially-prepped "PR" file,which is what I printed, and later made the above jpeg from. The other 3 versions remain uncropped, with foreground intact.

[Jakov Minić]

Thank you, Dave. These are lovely.

[David Paterson]

Thank you both very much, Jakov and Mongo.

It was a serene early morning, but quite cold (on the way over there my car said -5C). Soon after the contrails, a mist started to gather and quite quickly everything was blotted out. When I saw my raw files, all the boat shot had this - quite wrong - blue colour. But I decided it suited the mood so I didn't correct it.

[John Geerts]

Beautiful David, and I like especially the serene light blue atmosphere of #2.

[simato73]

Armando and everyone who has commented, thank you so much - you are all very kind.

#2 has been very slightly cropped all round - it was shot at 200mm on my 70-200/4 and was slightly loose; needed tightening up a bit. It is possible to argue that I took a little too much off the foreground. But it's done now and there may be no going back. I whisper this, for fear of the scorn and derision that may be heaped on my head - I no longer keep raw files, unless (a) they are particularly difficult to process and (b) I am not satisfied with what was achieved so far. As soon as I have what I regard as a good raw conversion, I save a 48-bit tiff. As soon as a batch of tiffs has been backed-up, I delete the corresponding raw files. Later, I make a selection of the best 20% or s of the archived files; these get backed-up again. Actually, in the case of the boat, I am keeping 3 variants and a specially-prepped "PR" file,which is what I printed, and later made the above jpeg from. The other 3 versions remain uncropped, with foreground intact.

I'll admit I was horrified when you told me about your practices, but if it works for you (and it certainly does!) why not?

Turning to your new batch of lovely images, are you sure the contrails are not from a Trident missile that misfired?   
(muster the air defenses? perhaps better not)

[Frank Fremerey]

Wonderful to hear from you! Your images are Killin! Send my love to your wife also!

[David Paterson]

I'll admit I was horrified when you told me about your practices, but if it works for you (and it certainly does!) why not?

Turning to your new batch of lovely images, are you sure the contrails are not from a Trident missile that misfired?   
(muster the air defenses? perhaps better not)

I still get a bit shaky, deleting maybe six months'-worth of raws . . . but I know my self pretty well, and I will *never* go back and re-process old raw files. Of course, no system is accident-proof, especially very simple ones like mine. But in my disk failure before Christmas I lost all my system and other software, contacts, emails, documents, etc, but not a single image. Touching wood, crossing fingers, etc. If you have any plans to come north, let me knw.

Frank - Mayumi says hello and thank you. So do I.

[brent_e]

the mourning of a new era, perhaps?!


Lovely images.  fog gives a particularly eerie feel.