Parc d'Armorique..this is where I live, if I had to try and describe it it's like a mixture between the Lake District, the Peak District and the New Forest but without all the tourists..... and just down the road to the North, West and South are the varied coastlines of Brittany and I've not really photographed much of it, all the work on the farm and being a wee bit ill for the past 6 months has knocked all the things I've planned to do on the head. So, new gear in the bag, Nikon 24-85, 70-200 and 50mm lenses to try out and I've barely given the D750 a chance to stretch it's legs..I'm waffling..anyway here are some snaps from Le Gouffre, where the River Argent runs down to the old Roman Lead mines and only about 6km from home.. So back with the ND filters and tripods over the next few weeks.

There are times when you want a shot so badly that, well, you just have to ignore that little flashing flash(?) symbol or sometimes little wavy hand, brace yourself against some solid object, take a slow sniper breath and blat a shot off. But what if you want to take a shot at a crazy low shutter speed to record some movement but then want some sharpness in there as well...I know...get a tripod or as I've done on the beach, make a dinky sandcastle or place your camera on a rock...but what about hand held...with a telephoto in challenging conditions. 
Enter stage left the Nikon VR 3 system and with a bit of algorithmic waftines, Photoshop CC and it's Shake reduction filter.  So out and about in the rather wonderful Huelgoat woods shooting the woodland in some nice low autumnal sunshine, ended up at the old Roman Lead mines and the River Argent... so walking back along the River path it suddenly struck me that a tripod would be more than useful but that was many a kilometer away in the car. So as I was out giving my new Nikon 70-200 F4 VR 3 a bit of a shakedown well, I thought I'd try to see how far I could push things... so 1st image is shot at F13 145mm on an FX...but at 1/8th of a second hand held...1/8th yep with VR active I wanted moving water but something sharp as a counterpoint.

Looks like they use a lot of edge contrast maths in a kind of Clarity fashion..add too much filter and you do get a breakout of light and dark haloing on the edges but trial and error will give you the experience to sort it out. So here is an enlargement from the bottom of the Holly as a before and after view, I'm sure there is something to be done by using a color selection and turning it into a mask to blend the shake reduced image(?) back into the original file anyhow...handheld at 1/8th and sharpish with a Telephoto..well what's not to like

So first up is an old Freecom 500gb drive which has all kinds of stuff tucked away so I've loaded some into a Lightroom Catalog and set about for a faff. When I look back on some of the processing I did..well..it is to my eyes now quite harsh, in those days the workflow was Bridge to Photoshop and off you go..use all the toys..spank that file until the pixels squeak. Well one things changed for sure and that's workflow.. Lightroom CC to Photoshop CC and saved back to Lightroom for a final once over before exporting...I was a late Lightroom adopter, version 3 I think and these days I never bother with bridge..time eh!! Still having it all on subscription means I'm always up to date...anyway these files are all shot with a Fuji S3 and it's buddy, the Tokina 12-24, delving into the files it wasn't such a bad combo, mind you I now see all the sensor dust...yikes....lumpy!! No wonder Alamy used to refrain from accepting some of the early stuff... so these shots are from Blackpool and Glasgow..mono conversions with my new found skills(?) on  Wacom put to the test and its wafty brushing onto masks thingy. I'll be concentrating on the Black and White stuff for the next few posts and as I've just downloaded some screen recording software I'll give you the chance to see what goes on when I'm left on my own with some old hard drives and the whole of Spotify to amuse me.