Bend of the Canal

After the enjoyment of the Lake District last week and the pleasure of photographing the River Brathay in evening and morning light it was back to the flatlands of the West Midlands today.  At least I was awake in time to see this sunrise in a slightly different location along the Wyrley and Essington Canal.

Technical: You have to admire how panoramic stitching has come on these days.  I was able to leave Lightroom's Photo Merge facility to do its thing with no intervention on my part.  Even exposure was handled with aplomb despite the wide range of exposures across the different frames. The machinations to create panoramas in such situations are becoming a distant memory.  


This was a 7 shot stitch, using the 9-18mm Olympus lens.  I haven't used this lens much in recent times, preferring the 7-14mm.  What it does have over the wider zoom is the ability to use filters and this proved essential with the 0.9 ND reverse grad controlling the exposure at the horizon.


I've also been enjoying using the range mask control in the adjustment tools in Lightroom.  This has revolutionised control of highlights and shadow detail, particularly where the trees are open and you want to lighten shadow areas without affecting the sky.  This was needed to bring back shadow detail along the far towpath.


If you're interested I've put a few other photographs from last weeks trip in a Flickr album.