Boseong Tea Fields

Where To Live?

My wife and I are at a crossroad in our lives. It is time to create a place called home – a place of comfort to return to after long photography trips. We aren’t location independent at the moment. We have an apartment in South Korea. But since our stay in S. Korea is so short, it isn’t a place we could call our own.

The next step in our life is to purchase a home. The destination, however, is still uncertain. We became financially free years ago, paying off all of our debt, and my business is internet based. So we are free, depending on visa restrictions for each country, to choose where we wish to settle.

To make this decision we’ve talked a lot about what makes us happy and tried to work out which place would tick most of the boxes. Our hometown of Newcastle ticks many of the boxes. It’s a cozy but vibrant city, with lots going on. We have friends and family there. The UK has free healthcare and little violent crime.

But, what it lacks is decent weather. After leaving the UK 6 years ago, we have come to realise how unfortunate our fellow Brits back home are, in terms of weather. My wife and I have had virtually six months of beautiful weather in Korea.

We regularly enjoy a coffee on the terraces of local cafes during these sunny afternoons. And the warm evenings allow us to indulge in a glass of wine, either on rooftop terraces or street terraces.

Just last week we went to a music festival in town. Despite being the middle of October, the weather was perfect. We sat out all night with friends, enjoying Korean rice wine and singing songs with locals. In the UK, the weather rarely permits this.

As an alternative, we had thought about moving to Valencia, Spain. Not only could we get a lot more property for our money, the weather is beautiful most of the year. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Valencia three times, and I love the city.

The challenge would be the language barrier. My Spanish is decent, albeit a bit rusty, but Rachel would have to start from scratch. Starting up a new life (and a business) in a second language is a big challenge. It isn’t one we’ve completely discounted, but for now Valencia is on the back burner.

Another option is Wanaka, New Zealand, where my wife’s brother lives. It offers 600 more hours of sunshine a year than Newcastle, but has the same amount of rain fall. There is no language barrier. We’d be surrounded by beautiful countryside. We’d certainly have a relaxed lifestyle. And right now the NZ government has an ‘immigration drive’ to encourage more Brits to move over there.

Having never been to NZ it is not possible to make that decision now. The couple of months we’ll spend there next year will be both a photography trip, and a scouting mission.

Having these options, we are in a very fortunate position. And there are many other destinations we could still pursue.  It is an exciting time. And after 6 years of being abroad, and travelling, we’re looking forward to that next step.

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How I Created The Image – Before/After Post-Processing

Workflow Explanation – Boseong Tea Fields

This image was created using Raya Pro – The Photoshop Plugin.

This image is composed of 2 long exposures. I used a B+W 10-stop (77mm) ND filter. I first bracketed without the ND filter, so I had some workable exposures. Then, with the ND attached, I exposed for the sky, which was 82 seconds long. Blending a long exposure into a normal, short exposure can sometimes be tricky where the sky is involved.

If you want to place the sky from a long exposure (like the sky in this image) with a normal quick exposure, the difficulty may be that the cloud texture is too different between exposures. You may have soft, fluffy clouds in the short exposure, and long drawn-out clouds in the long exposure. In this case you may have to swap the entire sky out, rather than blending the exposures using luminosity masks or any other exposure blending technique.

This is why I like to take a brighter long exposure for the foreground too. Not only will the sky (if it isn’t greatly over exposed) be relatively consistent with the darker sky exposure, making the blending process easier, you will also have consistent colouring if your particular ND filter leaves your images with a cast.

The whole process with two long exposures, in my opinion, is much easier than with one LE and one SE. However, this also depends on the elements you wish to use in each exposure, and how you’ve shot the scene.

For this image, the blending process took a couple of seconds using the Bright Rapid Blend If function in Raya Pro. In Color Efex I used just a little bit of Pro Contrast filter to give more life to the fields.

With all contrast adjustments I was careful not to brighten the sky too much.  I wanted the sky and the fields in the foreground to frame the highlighted area of the fields and the tree. I needed to make sure that neither of these areas were too bright.

I used DB1 in Raya Pro to dodge the highlighted part of the field and bring it to life. I played with a few colour combinations using a color balance layer and eventually found a nice green/purple/pink combination.

After cloning out a couple of distraction elements, like the lights by the trees on the left, I then created a vignette to push the eye further towards the highlighted area in the field.

I then prepared the image for the web with Raya Pro, which also sharpened it nicely.