The BIG pudding!

This is not an April's Fool pic, it's as taken, as in nothing added or taken away. The title refers to my description yesterday of Old Sarum hill-fort looking like a big collapsed pudding - and this is the entrance side (far side in yesterday's) - I'm on the second inner ring looking up at the top inner one - and where the huge steep ramparts are at their most imposing.

Am getting this up quickly as I thought Virgin had cut off my broadband and phone yesterday, as soon as I had put yesterday's up, all went dead. So, I went off in a cloud of anger, all day, cursing the circumstances of not even being able to pay the bill, to find it back on when I got home. Until I clear the arrears, obviously it could disappear again, so if I go silent, Blipwise, that's why.

I'd been looking forward to pointing the Nikkor 10-24mm lens at the weird and interesting trees up there since I got it. The extreme coverage of this lens almost doesn't help, it includes a lot of sky but also a lot of junk. Getting all these to a cohesive whole is as much of a headache as it looks, here. I could have gone with a safer, less busy concoction, but whilst my imagination's still sharp, I'm always going to veer toward that.

Despite the quite cloudy conditions, the brightness/shadow differences were too much for the sensor and I spent more time and effort, I think, than on any other Blip. The yew trees are jet black and needed a lot of 'lift', the steep grass bank ahead lost all contrast in the black & white conversion. The sky burned out in places and much much more. Why do I do all this - why do I bother? Because it's what I do. I'd be doing it for a living if I were able and a real challenge really is just that. Photoshop isn't just about wacky colours and the celebrity's heads on the wrong bodies...

But then, it still looked wrong. The people on the top made the image and made it human, gave it scale. Then, I tried something simple - I squashed it more. I didn't crop it top nor bottom to get this more elongated final result. The squashed pudding simply got more squashed.

Thanks to all comments on yesterdays - almost all praised the sky and indeed, that became the dominant feature but it didn't start out that way. To my eyes, especially at the time of taking was the simple composition. The light hitting the hedge on the left and the one leading in on the right.

It's not so surprising that this was not commented on - a solid, classic composition doesn't shout it out, it sits restfully on the eyes and the placing of the elements I mentioned, refers to the 'Golden rule of Thirds'.

This may be useful to you newcomers out there and I'm sure you will have heard of this 'rule' before. Even if you haven't, start going to camera clubs etc and you'll have it bandied about like confetti at a wedding.

A more choclatty 'Pudding' version now uploaded!

Try the pic out on 'L', large -

....and have a great Easter Monday, folks