In the 19th century so the story goes, a rich householder who lived within sight of where the bridge is now built the original bridge of stone which stood here. He built the bridge for his two daughters so they could get to the beach on the other side. Alas this stone bridge was eventually washed away in a storm however the stone foundations remained and were reused as the foundations for the new bridge.

Tags:   mono black white belhaven scotland east lothian bridge nowhere beach scott masterton fascinating light pentax k30 nd400 ndx400 sigma 17-50 mm

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Samsāra literally meaning "continuous flow", is the repeating cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth (reincarnation) within Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, and Yoga. According to the view of these Indian religions our current life is only one of many—stretching back before birth into past existences and reaching forward beyond death into future incarnations. During the course of each life the quality of the actions (karma) performed determine the future destiny of each person. The Buddha taught that there is no beginning or end to this cycle. The goal of Indian religions is to escape this process, the achievement of which is called moksha. In popular use, Samsara may refer to the world (in the sense of the various worldly activities which occupy ordinary human beings), the various sufferings thereof; or the unsettled and agitated mind through which reality is perceived.


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Tags:   steetley hartlepool england uk sand beach water rivers life flow reincarnation birth death rebirth circle scott masterton fascinating light pentax k30 sigma 10-20 mm ND400 ndx400 mono

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I know, I'm boring... but I like shooting iconic locations, to see what I can do myself with the location and also because I read a post recently from someone who had refused to shoot 'the tree' on Loch Nah Achlaise on Rannoch Moor because everyone else had, and then the tree was blown down in a gale and they regretted never having shot it.

On a different subject many of you will know that I have been quite unwell for just over a year now. The last few weeks have seen an improvement in my situation hence the reason I've been out and about taking photos again. Whether this is temporary or not only time will tell.

One of the things that has helped me throughout is flickr. During the times I have been confined to home I was able to surf flickr and see lots of wonderful places around our beautiful planet. During the early days on the odd occasion that I was able to get out and take some photos it was really nice to be out taking photos and remember what it was like to enjoy being alive and it was good to share those moments on flickr.

I've said it before but I just want to say again at this time of year, thank you all for your support through this time.

As a little Christmas thank you, I'm sharing with you two lightroom presets that I've created from the settings that I used on my last two mono shots. There are basically mono conversions with a very slight hint of selenium. They are both quite similar but do have slight differences.

I don't know if this will work or not as it's the first time I've tried doing this, but if it does then by clicking on the links you should hopefully be able to download the file to your computer and then all you have to do is go into lightroom, right click on the Users Presets folder and click import and navigate to wherever you saved the file. You can then apply the preset to any of your shots

I find that presets work differently on different files, so they might not work for you but hopefully they will, a lot depends on how you've processed the color file before you apply the preset (I think). You can perhaps at least use it as a base to tweak further.

Anyway Merry Christmas to you all, I hope you all have a Happy New Year and thanks again for helping me through this one.

docs.google.com/open?id=0B0rjYOUeCi2BR2pXaWF6TUpyeE0

docs.google.com/open?id=0B0rjYOUeCi2BUF9tbGJQRTJMZmM

ps follow me on twitter if you like, I might post some more presets there in the future.

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Tags:   steetley pier jetty derelict long exposure nd400 ndx400 scott masterton fascinating light pentax k30 hartlepool north east england uk sigma 10-20 mm lightroom presets abandoned vanishing feet wet

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So I thought I'd better do a mono, as I've been accused by a professional photographer in the past of only being able to do colour. It's roughly a year now but it still annoys me :o)

I've also been experimenting with doing mono a different way. I have Silver Efex Pro v1 but to be honest I've never really been able to get a result out of it that I like and I never upgraded to v2 for that reason.... and I also felt it was a bit expensive when I don't do a lot of mono. So today I thought I'd see if I can do mono in lightroom and I'm really quite pleased with the result, so I'm going to try and do some more mono work in lightroom to see if I can repeat it, because if I can then I'd be really pleased to be able to just use lightroom for any mono work.

Do let me know if you think it works or not.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_the_North

Tags:   angel north gateshead tyne wear england uk sculpture antony gormley mono black white scott masterton fascinating light lightroom pentax k30 sigma 10-20 mm long exposure nd400 ndx400

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Tags:   loch turret reservoir control tower fortress solitude refuge solitary hermit crieff scotland scott masterton fascinating light pentax k30 sigma 17-50mm square mono long exposure ND400 ndx400 black white glen very vle seclusion reclusive travel tourism

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