Scott Keegan Photography

This image was captured from the Docklands area of Melbourne, hand-held against the balcony rail of an apartment we were staying in.  There hasn’t been much post-processing done, just a little saturation and contrast adjustment and a moderate amount of sharpening.  I took around 6 shots and this was the only one that came out, just wish I’d had a tripod with me on that trip.

Melbourne is one of my favourite cities in Australia.  I find it much more laid back and low-key than Sydney, and in some sense a little continental with their cafe culture and relaxed dining.  I also love the trams!  Most Australian cities had them in days of old, and then replaced them with buses, much to their loss.

This is a lovely house in East Sussex, part of which dates from the 15th century.  It was acquired by a businessman named Nathaniel Lloyd in 1909 and he had a 16th century house in a similar style moved from Kent.  The two were combined with new work by the architect Edwin Lutyens to create a much larger house, which was rechristened Great Dixter.  It is a romantic recreation of a medieval manor house, complete with great hall, parlour, solar and yeoman’s hall.  There are also substantial gardens to explore around the house.

The image was taken from the gardens at the rear of the house and processed in Photomatix from 3 images at +1/-1 stops and then tweaked in Lightroom using the adjustment brush tool.

I thought Tintern Abbey was fantastic, although difficult to photograph as there isn’t a lot of space around the site with unobstructed views, unless you’re prepared to hike into the hills, and that’s just not me.

This image was first processed in Photomatix and then had some basic adjustments applied in Lightroom.  I then ran it through Topaz DeNoise to reduce the usual HDR processing artefacts before giving it some ‘pop’ in Topaz Adjust.  Finally I gave it a bit more clarity and sharpening in LR3.

Taken while climbing the 99 steps up to Whitby Abbey.  Processed the file in LR2 and then gave it a bit extra punch using Topaz Adjust v4.

This was taken at the Canal Boat Festival in Little Venice, London during the recent May bank holiday.  It’s a 3 exposure +/- 2 stops HDR which I processed in Photomatix, then tweaked in Lightroom 3 beta 2 and CS5 to test out some of the new functionality.  I don’t normally push my HDR shots this much but the sky was so forbidding (the heavens opened not long after this) that I couldn’t resist it.

This area is often referred to as the “Grand Canyon” of Jordan.  The drive down from the mountains and then through this area was spectacular!  I decided to go for a HDR shot as the colour of the rocks was fantastic and I just didn’t think the non-HDR version of the shot did them justice.

This was first processed in Photomatix and then tweaked in Lightroom using the adjustment brush.  There are several brush adjustments made; to the sky to improve the colour and contrast, to the foreground to reduce the exposure, and a few saturation tweaks on the rocks.