Photos

Having lived in Bristol for over eight years, thought we'd take advantage of either the first day of spring, or just an unseasonally warm February day (pseudo spring perhaps), to explore some of the surrounding countryside. We always say to people that one of the advantages of living here is that we're in the centre of a busy city but can get out to the country in 5 minutes. Time to actually make that more than an idle boast.

Portbury is a small village about seven miles west of Bristol proper. On one side is the busy M5, but on the other are farms surrounded by some lovely wooded hills. The circular walk we went on was not primarily a photo-taking jaunt, but the guide book we have suggested taking the camera - for bluebells mainly, but we were a bit early in the year for those - snowdrops, but no bluebells.

This rolling field, covered with the early shoots of a crop that I am too ignorant of agriculture to identify, was lit just right by the low light of the early evening winter sun - just demanding a picture!

The crop (no pun intended) I've chosen cuts off most of the farm track on the left, most of the sky and some of the scrubby foreground.

In post, only serious change is that I used a darker exposed version of the sky from RAW than the rest of the photo and blended them. Other than that, I added a slight vignette, used curves(again only slightly) and sharpened.