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During November 2017 my wife Liz and I managed an impromtu long weekend in the Lake District, which we spent driving and walking, checking out the beautiful scenery and changeable weather.
While driving north from Conniston we saw a sign for Tarn Hows, which sparked a childhood memory in Liz from a holiday maybe fifty years ago.
So we couldn't pass by, and turned off up the small lane to explore.
It turned out that Tarn Hows is now a National Trust property and World Heritage site, complete with car park, café, loos and a well maintained path all around the lake - what a great organisation!
As the afternoon wore on, the cloud cover grew thicker until the sun was reduced to a patch of glowing light behind the clouds.
Ideal conditions for a spot of contre-jour photography, especially with those beautiful woodlands reflecting in the still waters of the lake under a delicately textured sky.
Mind you, I couldn't fit such a wide contrast range into one exposure, so I took a series of five exposures, each one stop apart, to be HDR blended later on in Adobe Lightroom.
A process I'm glad to say worked very well, with detail retained in both the shadowed trees and bright sky.
Filename - lake district tarn hows 08.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D DSLR
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - various @ f11, ISO100
Filters - 2 stop neutral density graduated filter used to balance the exposure between the scene and its reflection
Location - Tarn Hows, Lake District, Cumbria, England
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop CC
Comments - HDR blend of multiple exposures due to extreme contrast range.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2026 unless otherwise stated.