Introduction

Following my trip to Westgate Hill Cemeteryy I decided to make a trip to Grangetown Cemetery which is very close to my house.

This is a much larger cemetery which is very well looked after and people use it as a park where they walk their dogs or take exercise. It is at least a quarter of a mile wide and maybe even longer in length and there are thousands of graves going back at least 150 years.

Unfortunately the first time I went (yesterday) I wasn't happy with the sky.

Despite it being close to sunset the clouds just didn't look right in a lot of the shots. I went back today and there were some beautiful clouds but unfortunately I had to abort the trip early as I came under attack from one of the great enemies of photography - heavy rain.

I will try to go back and take a better look around as with a place of this size it takes a long time just to look at a tiny portion of the graves before you can even start taking shots. Just walking from one end of the other takes a bit of time.

As before these shots are meant for you to use in your own posts as per Steemit4free.

Processing

I decided to do some more experimentation with processing on these shots. I wasn't able to do as many as before due to fact that the high contrast black and white ones take a massive amount of time to process due to the multiple masks and curves adjustments required to get them to look right. I have also done a couple of colour versions - I can do more if people want to see them.

The Photos

1

This is my favourite of the shots I have processed today. I also like the colour version of this which is next. For this version I used a number of masks in Photoshop and combined them with use of the detail extractor tool from Nik Color Efex Pro 4. I also did numerous curves adjustments to get the contrast right on different parts of the shot. The black and white conversion was in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 (get all their plugins free here). This was my basic process for all the black and white versions. The colour versions were a bit more straightforward.

2

It seems the position of the light was just right for this shot. This was also pretty quick to edit in Photoshop. I did a minor curves adjustment and some colour adjustment to bring out the shadows and colours to make it more representative of what I saw with my own eyes.

3

I have no idea what the emblem on this cross represents but I liked the design. It also had some interesting colours to it and I will try to get out a colour version of it in one of my next posts.

4

A different view of the same cross. Here you can see more of the trees in the distance.

5

Another cross with texture that I liked. The colour version of the same shot is next.

6

I went for a more muted look for this one and resisted brightening up the shadows too much. It was getting really close to sunset at this point. This is a fairly accurate version of how things actually looked at least in terms of colour.

7

Another grave with a large cross and some interesting texture to it. I tried doing a colour version of this but it just wasn't looking right.

8

A quick shot to give an idea of how big the cemetery is. This view shows about a sixth of it (maybe even less). I took this as the sun was setting and at that time the shadow areas of the shot were very dark whilst the sky was very bright.

I think for a scene like this HDR photography is the only way to capture it properly otherwise you get a very murky looking shot like this which is neither bright enough in the brights or dark enough in the darks.

Also this shows what the clouds were like yesterday - not really very photogenic. That's often the problem the really photogenic clouds often turn into rain very quickly!

If you like my work and aren't already, please follow me and check out my blog (I mainly discuss photography but I do other topics too) - @thecryptofiend

Camera: Nikon D800 with Sigma 24-70mm/2.8 lens.

Photo Credits: All photos are my own unless otherwise stated and free for you to use under the terms of Steemit4free

(Verification for me here: http://www.aapicture.com/about-me)

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A few shots from Grangetown Cemetery - photos for you to use in your Halloween and other posts