Down to Earth (Click for larger view)

You may wonder what you are looking at. The lines of stone that I was

kneeling on to take this shot was once a wall of the barracks that housed

the slate miners that worked in this area. The wall has fallen and formed a

kind of slate mosaic with patterns that always fascinates me. The buildings

in the distance are other bits of the barracks, interesting to note that the

timbers have long since rotted away but the slate remains unchanged.

Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated. Thank You.

Alf, a very good image.  I really like the leading lines, your low POV, and the sky.  Another good one from you.  Cheers, bb

I swear, you must be fractured to be drawn to so many cracked images :-).  Superb detail, great light, and excellent cloud management.  That D800 is so sharp I zoomed in to examine the structure and found an interesting red pipe (?) at right center.  Very well done...  Mike

I love this Alf, with the lines that draw in the eye, the history, and the subtle natural colors.  

Alf: lovely shot. Tremendous depth, detail, clarity and a gray sky that seems to match the foreground rocks.  While I will most often prefer the color version, I am thinking that this will also be great in Black and White. Alf there is some softness at the bottom left and bottom right side.  I am just curious as to what aperture you used. If wide-open, I am just wondering if closing down a couple of stops will resolve that especially as the bottom middle portion is perfectly well defined. 

I consider this to be a very high quality image and what I stated in the aforementioned has a very diminutive effect on my enjoyment of this image.

ALL THE VERY BEST,

I love ancient sites, i saw many in Ireland and i was wandering how they lived in such a valleys surrounded by mountains... such lovely place, all the best Alf, you captured this scene very well, best regards!

Hi Alf..

Any one see such details and sharpness in a hand held capture convinced that there was no need to use tripod at all. Very cool result

A beautiful scene and very well captured. I might have tried a portrait version with the rule of thirds. This could eliminate the red pipe and as tony mentioned, closing down the aperture might improve the edge performance.

Hi Alf

This is another dramatic and gloomy landscape image that conveys the hardness of the local climate to the viewer. This image might work well also in B&W format.

A really beautiful result with impressive lighting and details, Alf!

Hi Alf,

A fine use of the Nikon zoom at 14 mm F/4.

The results are excellent for this very interesting subject.

I saw that you hand held your camera and lens to obtain this shot................nice work my friend !

As for stopping down the aperture to improve the edges :

1] All zoom lens have the issue of curvature, to various degrees, at the edge of the field.

2] To address this by stopping down the lens further compromises the over all performance seen here.

3] The best way to avoid these issues is to use a high quality Rectilinear lens of fixed focal length, like the Nikkor 14 mm F/2.8 or older 15 mm F/3.5, etc.. Carl Zeiss also makes some excellent Rectilinear lens suitable to use on the Nikon camera

4] Nikon does provide correction information for their zoom lens that you can use in porgrams like Photoshop. This information can help improve the "edge" performance of  wide angle lens through software correction algorithms, too. 

Best Regards my friend, Mike

Fine use of the wide-angle lens Alf, the lines take the viewer right into the center of the image, but I find great interest in the slate itself. Its a very interesting image in that its amazing to see so much slate in one place. Good one Alf. Take care.

Best Always,

Holger

Has depth and perspective, great texture and wonderful colors and the sky makes it moody! Well done Alf!

Best regards

PDE

Hi Alf,

  Beautiful scene that just keeps drawing you in.  Wonderful details & colors.  Take care, Patsy

Very nicely composed with emphasis given to the foreground elements and with the ruins and hills for context.  You lucked out with (perhaps planned for?) soft diffused lighting which allows all the important details and textures to be revealed here.  Your dialogue was very helpful in filling in the blanks for those of us who are visiting this location for the first time.  Best,  LM.

"Too much" nice and creative proposal!!!

To All for my late response. I couldn't seem to get PN to load properly and when I did the "Contribute a Critique" tab revealed only a subject box and nowhere to type a reply.

BILL 

It wasn't the most comfortable of positions squatting down on that sharp slate, but it was the only way I could get the right perspective, literally a pain the butt! : - )

Many Thanks Bill.

Alf 

MIKE 

You sure you didn't mean "I swear you must be cracked to be drawn to so many fractured images"   : - ) 

As for the pipe, there are all kinds of odd bits and pieces laying about, the artefacts of a bygone age.  I even found a double drainer stainless steel sink top in the lake. 

Many Thanks for your thoughts and positive feedback Mike! 

Alf 

DOMINICK 

It's a weird place, and sometimes its really difficult to catch its mood, but I'm attracted to it like a magnet. I guess I find the history fascinating.

Sincere Thanks & Best Regards 

Alf 

TONY 

I have tried to convert this to B & W and with some success. The only thing I didn't like was that the mood perhaps became a bit too sombre and depressing.  But maybe that's not an altogether bad thing either.

You are accurate with your assessment of the softness at the lower corners, and yes I used F/4 aperture in close proximity of the foreground and probably focused further into the image than I would normally to ensure that the building was sharp.

By contrast the next shot I intend to post from this perspective is portrait ( I always think of your very good advice from many moons ago when you mentioned it was always a good idea to include a couple of portrait shots where possible)  and is stopped down to  F/5.6 not a huge change in aperture but the difference in result is significant. 

Many Thanks for your input Tony, it is much appreciated! 

Best Regards 

Alf

SLAVOMIR 

I agree these places are fascinating. We hear people today complaining that they are underprivileged if they don't have central heating and a colour TV, and when you see places like this it kind of puts it all into perspective. The hardships that these people endured as part of every day life strike a hard contrast to the way we live today.

Many Thanks for your thoughts and positive feedback! 

Best Regards 

Alf 

MUSEEB 

With such a fast shutter speed even I am in no danger of  blur due to camera shake. This particular shot was very awkward to use a tripod because of the ridges of stone and the comparatively low perspective, so on this occasion I put the tripod to one side.

Many Thanks Museeb! 

Alf 

JOCELYN 

Many Thanks for your interest and thoughtful feedback, much appreciated!

The next posting takes on board your suggestion of a portrait orientated shot and a slightly smaller aperture. The result addresses the edge sharpness and definition, but it doesn't remove the metal objects. There are several of them within the image and they don't really bother me at all. They seem to me to be as much a part of the ruins as the slate.

Best Regards 

Alf 

JUHA 

If you think this is gloomy, you want to see it when it rains! : - ) 

But seriously It is most gratifying to read that the mood is successfully conveyed to the viewer, its something I've tried hard to achieve and it can be elusive.

I have tried the B & W processing, but in all honesty the gloomy aspect become perhaps too pronounced......well at least for my tastes.  I may try and post one in the future to see what others think.

Sincere Thanks Juha.

Alf 

RUUD 

Many Thanks for your continued interest and kind words! 

Regards 

Alf 

MIKE P

Many Thanks for your interesting feedback, particularly those references made to specific rectilinear lenses, I am sure that information will prove useful.

By way of comparison and as part of my continued experimentation with apertures my next posting will be the same scene, the same focal length, but taken at F/5.6 and with a portrait orientation.  

I will of course leave you take make your own conclusions as to the results.

Best Regards my friend! 

Alf 

HOLGER 

Many thanks for your observations and thoughtful feedback, very much appreciated.

It is most interesting that you raised the subject of the material itself.

The Welsh slate was known to be the best quality in the world and was consequently exported to hundreds of different countries.

One of the most difficult tasks when trying to make images work here is isolating area's of slate that have a different backdrop, otherwise the image becomes lost in the vast sea of slate that resides here.

Cheers Holger! 

Alf 

PIERRE 

Thanks you so much for your interest and positive feedback. 

I think I was helped a lot by the presence of the clouds, they allowed some sunlight through, but reduced the harshest rays.

Best Regards 

Alf 

PATSY 

Actually, you used the very words I thought of that described the effect I wanted from this shot "drawing you in" 

Many Thanks Patsy! 

Best Regards 

Alf 

LEN 

I seem to be quoting these words more often these days, I don't know where they originate from but they seem appropriate.

"The more I practice the luckier I get"  : - ) 

The soft diffused lighting is courtesy of watching the weather forecasts carefully then getting up at 4.00 am and walking up the mountain to get some decent light.  That being said, there is still a large element of luck involved because weather forecasts can be totally wrong too.

In this case they got it right though with Clouds / Sunshine forecast from dawn. 

The location becomes more fascinating the more I learn about it.  It is my intention to try and get back up here when the snow is on the ground, just to try and get some shots of how harsh the climate is up here, though previous attempts I have failed simply because access is difficult.

Always good to hear from you Len 

Many Thanks 

Alf 

MAURIZIO

A combination of man and nature. The ravaged hillsides slowly are reclaimed by nature, the very rock unearthed by man's toil eventually returns "down to earth" 

Many Thanks 

Alf 

but i love it.  why don't you take terrible pictures more often.  everybody else takes great pictures.  leave that to the unwashed masses.  best, jamie

How could I fail, its a terrible place, with terrible lumps of Gray slate everywhere, and it was a terribly long walk....all of it uphill.

Terrible ain't so bad.........."ordinary" would have been been a disaster! 

Strangely the next one I shall post, (which is a portrait version taken from almost the same spot), looks kind of more tamed by comparison.

Glad you like  ..........nay "Love it" 

Cheers Jamie! 

Alf 

Alf, Wow! This is gorgeous, I see that you decided to hand-held your camera, so I'm wondering if you took another shot with tripod, just in case this one would not work. As I have been learning with Mike, I see that your aperture and speed allow you to have this wonderful image, and explain too why you did not need a tripod. I'm so happy with this pic, because in it I can see all the technical details that Mike Palermiti  is teaching me, so this image  help me  to understand much more all that he is sharing with me. Thanks so much for sharing you great job!!!!

Warm regards,

LuDa

Many Thanks for your interest and very encouraging comments! 

It is most interesting that you asked the question about taking a shot with the tripod.  The next image I post was taken with a tripod and with a slightly smaller aperture (F/ 5.6) 

I will not make any comments about it now, but wait until you see it and let you make up your own mind which one looks better.

I generally use a tripod for several reasons, it is like insurance, it takes away any guess work and after climbing up the side of a mountain to get a shot, you don't want to arrive back home to discover there was a slight camera shake. It allows thorough examination of composition before and after depressing the shutter, and it allows time for the environment to change (passing clouds, wind to settle etc) without holding the camera.

That is not to say that there is no place for hand holding the camera, this I will do when as in this instance it just wasn't practical, the deep ruts and low perspective making it rather awkward. It is also very useful to hand hold the camera with a moving target like a bird of a butterfly.

Mike is a great teacher of the science's behind photography, but don't forget that it is aesthetics that are at the front of it : - ) 

Warm Regards 

Alf 

I almost find it difficult to imagine there are places like this Alf.  The environment is so unusual. Well worth the climb Alf. Beautiful capture of a place many of us will never, ever see.

Sincere regards, Gail

I like the convergent perspective. As the eyes are lead to the pyramidal structure far in the middle, it takes time to discover the ruin on the right with it's still standing porch. Nice meditation on the temporal nature of all that we do.

Regards, Tibi

The place seems to blend the ravaged earth, the crumbling monuments of men and the power of nature that seeks to reclaim its stolen bounty.

It is indeed unlike anything I've seen before in any other country, and I find myself drawn to this location, each time discovering hidden gems, glimpses of lives once lived and echoes of an industry that slumbers under the bowels of the earth.

Many Thanks for your interest and kind words Gail.

Warm Regards 

Alf 

TIBI

One of the most difficult aspects of photographing this area is one of separation. There is so much slate in evidence trying to get a perspective where one ends and another starts is a challenge. Fortunately nature is gradually providing the solution by growing between the slate structures.

Sincere Thanks & Best Regards 

Alf 

Amazing place! Excellent work as usual!Bravo Alf