Tag Archives: shade

How Much Can Grow on a Thatched Roof?

Plenty of the houses in Longparish are thatched.  One of them has a roof line that drops very low to the ground on one side of the house with the door and windows on the other side.  That must be the side that gets more light.  The back side of the house seems to be very shaded with the result that there is a lot of growth on the roof.  It was covered in various lichens/mosses.  I wonder whether they degrade the thatch or actually provide an additional layer of insulation.

Sunlight Through the Mist

Moran State Park was a damp and shady place for a hike.  As we got closer to Cascades Lake, we got to an area that was a bit misty.  With the sun peaking through the trees, the moisture in the air picked up the shafts of sunlight picking through the branches.  I had not photographed this before and I was interested how to expose to get the effect to show up properly.

I wasn’t sure whether to underexpose or go with the base settings so I played around with it a bit.  Since it was the mirrorless M6 I was using, you get a bit of a preview in the viewfinder of what you will get but my experience of that camera is that the viewfinder can be a little off compared to what you get when working on the desktop.  A little tweaking and I was pretty pleased with the results.  I did also try some HDR just in case but I don’t think it was necessary.

At Last a Voyager – But…

The Royal Air Force has replaced its tanker force since I left the UK.  The VC-10s and TriStars have been retired and there is a public private partnership in place to deliver tanking support.  This uses converted Airbus A330s.  They are able to provide tanking and transport services (with some of the aircraft configured only for transport).  In RAF service, these jets are named Voyager.  Red Flag 17-1 was my first real opportunity to photograph a Voyager in action.  (Annoyingly my sister has shot them before me and has been on a refueling mission with them!)  While an A330 might not be the most exciting jet to see, I was really looking forward to photographing it.

As the mission was recovering, the light was great.  Low sun providing a warm and soft illumination on the returning jets.  Then, the Voyager called up.  Just as it did so, the sun went in.  The Voyager came down the approach, its gray fuselage in the shade of some clouds.  It landed, taxied in and then the sun came right back out again.  Arghh!  Sure, I can bump up the white balance a bit to warm things up but the jet was in shade and there is not much I can do about that.  I had to leave before it recovered on the following day so no luck then.  They will be around for a while so I guess I will get any crack at this at some point.