Under the trees

I am still behind because I left my laptop up in Yorkshire and realised today that apart from the laptop I have no card reader, so I can't check my pictures from Monday or today... Sorting it out tomorrow.

One thing I keep trying to catch on photographs but which I struggle to actually adequately reproduce is the feeling and light you get in a forest.
I took quite a few on saturday, for example, but it is always the same problem - they look too dark as caught, but if you lighten them up, even selectively, you lose that effect of shadow with light coming through the leaves. I know of some ways I could selectively tweak it with photoshop with masks and layer combinations but I dont have photoshop and wont buy it (or pirate it).

But when I saw this tree across the canal on Sunday I just had to try again - it's one of those dominant trees which have managed to oust the competition and have created a nice clean spot underneath (it might have had human help).

Anyway I spent far too much time trying to tweak the image, to somehow keep the softness of the original light while getting some detail out. Created a dozen versions, then gave up and in the end uploading an early, barely modified version.

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On Sunday the goal was a walk along the canal. As a few people might know pippiline and I plan to do 4x40 kilometers at the 4 day walk in Nijlmegen this summer, so the goal was to do 20km in below 3:30 along the Leeds to Liverpool canal.

The canal was lovely, it was dry and almost sunny, but very windy. To keep the pace I didnt take that many pictures - I'd meant to take more on the way back. Then there was no way back... Typical!

Alas my walking partner found out that he couldn't keep up the pace without getting blisters (wrong socks!). By the time we'd figured out where there was a bus running on a bank holiday, the wind was getting silly and I went back with him. So only about 10km done.

I'll do more next week when I am back up there - try to get to Skipton and get the inadequately-socked people to come pick me up there, if they can manage that without getting blisters.

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PS: am at @media in London this week in the unlikely even another blipper is there...

PPS: anyone in the region is welcome to get in touch if they want to do some walking with cameras :D