The Worst Aperture for Landscapes?

A big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Well, morning everyone. Fantastic to see you all again. I have come to a place I've wanted to come for so long in North Wales and it's called Dinner Wick Quarry. I've probably pronounced that wrong. Um, it's a vast quarry area um with Snowden and the Snowonia Mountains in the as a backdrop. In fact, you can't see Snowden at the moment. And I'm going to explore it over the next day or two. Um, it's the evening at the moment. There's some nice light. So, probably just going to fly my drone and just take it in. I got my camera. And yeah, I'm just having a break from my county series just to explore a little bit of Wales. Right. So, I've just arrived here with Lauren and um she knows the area really well. So, we're just heading down some barracks here, but the light's so good at the moment and I don't think there's going to be a huge amount of sunlight. Although, having said that, there's blue up there. But, I've got this scene here which just looks really interesting. So, I'm going to try and take it with that tree that's just getting a little bit of sun. The slate looks really nice texture and then the trees at the right hand side. Um, I think this will look pretty good like that. So, let's have a go. Already I'm in love with this place. It's so fantastic. Um, I think we're going to lose the sun for a bit now. I'm just hoping that th this ridge up here. I can't do it. Where the hell is that one over there? That ridge over there is Snowdom. Well, it's not Snowdom. Snowden's behind it. But there, I think the sun might go behind. But there's just so many interesting buildings like this one here. Um, and I I'm sort of out my comfort zone a little bit because I don't really shoot buildings, but I'm going to really try. And this is um you know, you probably saw the title of the video, shooting at f4 a little bit more. Um that rhymes. Um I thought this is a perfect chance to try that and use not an F2. 2. 8 lens, but an F4 lens, my 24 to 120, and just try and do a little bit of um depth of field and just try and get a few more things out of focus, which is not something that I tend to do in my landscape photography. I put on way too many layers though. So, just come to this barracks area. They're incredible these barracks. They're like they each got a chimney and the chimney shared by each side. I don't know how many people used to sleep in these, but I suspect it was fairly grim. Um, I imagine this in the winter just must have been absolutely awful. But yeah, there's quite there's a lot of symmetry here. I think it looked nice just taking a shot straight down there. But I really want to incorporate all these amazing trees that you can see everywhere like just over there. So I'm sort of trying to find a shot that I can shoot through, show these barracks and the trees as well. Um or again just thinking about depth of field, just try and shoot through something that just helps um you know frame these barracks. So there's maybe like this rock here I could maybe just shoot through here. Um so I'm going to try that first I think. So, I'm not sure if this really worked. It sort of looked like it was stuck on the bottom. Didn't lead you through the image. This one, however, worked a little bit better. I'm getting there. Okay. There's a composition here that I cannot claim that I found. I'm here with Lauren, who's an amazing photographer, and she spotted this composition. And um I think I've seen it online. So, I'm not taking anything away from Lauren, but I do think I've seen this composition before. Um I'd be very surprised if people coming here haven't seen this. I didn't see this. Hands up. Um, but there's a really nice sort of um I'll show you in my camera here. There's a really nice way that these trees sort of go around this. So, if you can see, I've got this tree that's just going around like this and this tree like this. And to be honest, I feel like this needs to be all in focus because unless I was shooting with like an F1. 8 lens, I'm not close enough to it to get it out of focus. So

I I'm going to try and get everything in focus. I'm going to bracket it. And then I want the base of these trees in as well down here. So, I think it's going to look pretty good. This is so good. By the way, Right, we've just climbed across a fairly sketchy part where a lot of the slate had fallen down. And apparently Lauren says that through here there's a waterfall. Is that right? A waterfall through here. So, into the cave we go. Feel like a kid. This is so exciting. Right, big climb now up these steps and hopefully we find some more huts and um see what I can get. I love this place. It's so cool. Right, got to the top of those stairs. And there's some quite cool buildings here. So, going to have a look around those. See what I can find. The light over there is getting quite nice, but it's sort of that sort of cloud that it's not quite poking through yet. So, I really need to just use some of these buildings as foreground, I think. Um, maybe try and find a window that I can get a shot through and um or maybe there might be a silver birch that I can find. Right. So, the idea for this shot is I'm going to just use a slightly shallow depth of field. Um, I think it'd be better with like an f2. 8 lens, but I've focused on the background there. Um, so at the moment it's focused on my face, but I'll show you in a second. But I focus on the background. And then this is sort of out of focus a little bit. I think it'll work and I think it's quite a nice shape. And also this sort of rust ties into the rust in the background as well. So I think there's something that ties together. The thing I'm a bit unsure about is just this sort of foreground area here. Um, or midground I would call it. I actually think this worked pretty well to be honest. And um yeah, the F4 lens probably was perfect. If you're liking this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're not subscribed, consider subscribing. Right, there's a window behind me here. As you can see, hopefully, no, you can't see out a bit, but I'll show you through my camera in a second. And I feel like this should be quite good if I just shoot through here. Um, and I shoot it maybe f4, then I can get the mountain. And there's like a little hook through there. And I feel like that's quite nice just to shoot it like that is what I'm thinking. So I'm going to give that a go at F4. And I'm going to bracket it cuz there's a lot of dynamic range. Right, I've got something low down here which I think is quite cool. Again, I'm just using F4, but just using the heather as just like a foreground and it's probably going to end up a little bit of a 2x1 this, I think. Um, yeah, cuz I I feel like just having a little bit of the mountain and then just trying to find out maybe that's quite nice there. And then I've got to bracket it because there's a lot of dynamic range and I want to bring back a little bit the sky. I think So, this place is so cool. So many things to look around. The light's really flat at the moment, so struggling a little bit, but going to try just a few more things. Try and um just try and use some of the the things that we find just in the foreground. But yeah

sometimes photography is not just about getting the best photo possible, but it's just about, you know, just experimenting, trying different things. They may not always work, but that doesn't matter. You can't always create a masterpiece. You've got to just hone your skills in other ways. And I feel like at the moment, I'm just trying different things, experimenting a little bit. A lot of it's not going to work, but it's so much fun doing it. So, onward. Right. So, I think this is quite a good shot. I've got this sort of pipe. It's all rusty. I've got a rusty drum in the background. And then a really nice sort of conversion of those into the mountain in the background with a light. Um, I think the clouds really darker higher up, so I'll be able to darken it down in post. So, I bracketed this. I think it's I honestly think this is quite a good shot. This might be my favorite shot if this heather was blooming. It' be amazing. This would be such a cool shot. So, I'll experiment more a little bit here now. It's getting really cold. And then I think we'll head down a little bit. What a beautiful area. The snow the um cloud is going over the top of the hill there just in front of Snowden. super geeky, but I think this and the many of them down there are all table saws for the slate. So there's this thing here that you can pull in and out. It's like a sort of clutch that engages this flywheel that then turns that saw which must been absolutely horrific because I don't think there's any protection on it. And then this is like a table saw that just pulls the bed over and it's got like this cog here that's turned with this and you must just turn it around like that and the big slate gets cut. Imagine working here 100 and odd years ago cuz this is well I think it was opened in 1779. Probably didn't have this machinery then but wow. So when I was there, I was thinking I'm not really getting great photos. I was a little bit worried. As I mentioned in the thing, I was sort of experimenting quite a lot. But now I've got back and looking at these photos, I've learned a lot about some of the different sort of techniques I used shallower depth of field. I've tried s some different things like um you know just shooting through windows and things like that through to scenes and um I think if you don't experiment you're never going to get better at your photography. I'll share some of these photos on a blog as I usually do um on my website which is built with Squarespace. And I just want to say before I share my favorite photo, thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. If you're looking for a website, New Year's is a great time to do that, isn't it? New Year's resolution, build your own website, take control of your own photos. You can do that really easily with Squarespace. And um it also allows you to sell your own photos as well if you want to do that, your prints, calendars, whatever else. So, if you're looking to do that, you can go to squarespace. com/nigel and that gives you 10% off, which is fantastic. It really helps me as well and my channel. Or use offer code Nigel. So, my favorite photos are definitely this shot here. Um, thanks to Lauren, who I was with that day, who found this shot and this composition. It's brilliant. Um, I have seen a few other shots of this composition as well since I've got back. I thought I had, you know, when Lauren showed it me that I thought I'd seen it before, but um, yeah, well done to Lauren for finding that. I love that this shot and I think it works really, really well. And, um, I also really liked this shot here with this pipe going through. I think it works really well. I'd love to go back and just in some sort of different conditions. The conditions were quite tricky, but I'd love to go back when there was snow as well. I think it would just be absolutely amazing here. I loved exploring this quarry and um yeah, getting outside my comfort zone a little bit. Thanks for watching and until a couple of Sunday's time. Bye.