ARCHIVE 577 – NEAR WEST LITTLETON (MONO)

 

 

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Early in the day: above the byway, east of West Littleton; South Gloucestershire; 12 Apr 2017.

More context on this second visit to the extreme south of the Cotswold Hills, and more images, can be found here.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 206mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Neutral preset.

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OUTER SUBURBS 283 – EARLY MORNING, APPROACHING THE MAIN ROAD

 

 

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Walking towards the main road, with streetlights, tail lights, tall trees and a bus shelter, and sunrise starting to colour the sky.

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day. 

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 10 Oct 2020.
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ARCHIVE KENYA 93 – THE VIEW SOUTH FROM BABOON CLIFFS

 

 

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The view south from Baboon Cliffs at Lake Nakuru; 27 Apr 1980.

Looking out across the lake on a calm day – which, in this area of convectional rainfall, can often turn into a towering thunderstorm later in the afternoon.

Nakuru is a soda lake in the rift valley’s floor and this view looks southwards down the rift.  The hills on the horizon, below the white clouds, are a group of small volcanoes, and the freshwater Lake Naivasha is just over the horizon to the left of them. 

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: OM-1 with 28mm Zuiko lens and polariser; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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ARCHIVE 573 – MORNING SKY, LOOKING NORTH (MONO)

 

 

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Looking up, looking to the north, early on a spring morning.

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.  

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: X-T2 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Provia/Standard film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Landscape preset and adding a Split Tone; Bourtonbridge Drove, Queen’s Sedge Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 26 April 2019.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 92 – KILIMANJARO AND MAWENZI (MONO)

 

 

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Mts Kilimanjaro (on the right) and Mawenzi seen from Tsavo West National Park; Dec 1977.

Both of these mountains are vast volcanoes, again associated with the fragmentation of eastern Africa, as mentioned in my Shaitani post (Archive Kenya 90).  They are just over the border in Tanzania – having been given by Queen Victoria to her cousin, the Kaiser, when the colonial powers were dividing up Africa.

This ancient colour slide is in deteriorating condition – with much grain and increasing discolouration – but here it is, doctored and in mono, to make it as presentable as possible!

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: OM-1 with 75mm-150mm Zuiko lens at 150mm; Agfa CT 18 colour slide film rated at 64 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Low Key 1 preset.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 88 – UNKNOWN SUNRISE

 

 

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Sunrise, somewhere in Kenya, probably in the late 1970s – how’s that for vague?

An Agfa colour slide with absolutely no information on it.  Am I sure its a sunrise? I think so – it has that clean, clear look – but who knows? And where is it taking place? Well, somewhere very flat – the bush country of Tsavo maybe, or perhaps the Maasai Mara grasslands? 

Click onto this image to see a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: OM-1 with 28mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 86 – EVENING AT THE SAND RIVER GATE (MONO)

 

 

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Evening at the Sand River Gate, Maasai Mara, Kenya; April 1979.

The dark foreground consists of bushed grassland  – dark acacia thorn bushes set in a sea of straw-coloured, savanna grassland.  Further back there are low and very rounded hills – and they’re in the Serengeti Game Reserve, in Tanzania.

I remember that there were three of us – myself and a married couple – on safari in their VW Kombi.  Kombis and VW Beetles too – with their rear-mounted, air cooled engines, rear wheel drive, high clearance and protective metal underbellies –  were excellent for rough roads and for off road too.  The couple slept in the van and I had a tent outside – I recall hearing Lion grumbling around nearby in the night.

And the great thing about camping in places like this was that we were always out and about at first and last light.  Sunrises and sets happen very quickly on the equator, far more quickly than at temperate latitudes, and you’ve got to be quick!  One of the things I missed about dear old England were the long summer evenings – on the equator, days are always something like 6am-6pm, with very little twilight either side.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: OM-1 with 28mm Zuiko lens and polarising filter; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the High Structure Smooth preset.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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ARCHIVE 568 – NEAR WEST LITTLETON

 

 

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Something Minimal, there’s really not much here, both in terms of content and colour, but straight black and white would lose a little I think.  And the bird – and getting focus on the bird – were fortuitous!

Click onto this image to open it in a separate window.

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Classic Chrome film simulation; near West Littleton, South Gloucestershire; 12 Apr 2017.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 85 – KILIMANJARO (MONO)

 

 

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Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, seen from Kenya’s Amboseli Game Reserve; July 1978.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: OM-1 with 75-150 Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film rated at 64 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 83 – THE EASTERN RIFT VALLEY AND THE MAU ESCARPMENT

 

 

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View westwards across the rift valley floor in Kenya, with the dark hills of the Mau Escarpment, the rift’s western wall, in the far distance; June 1978.

The eastern side of the African continent is breaking up and the Eastern Rift Valley, which runs through Kenya, is one of the vast fractures along which this fragmentation is occurring. 

The Mau Escarpment, seen in the distance, is the main part of the African continent, which stretches from there westwards right across to the Atlantic coast.

The terrain between the camera and those far away hills is the floor of the rift valley – a vast fracture in this ancient landmass –  and all of this land between the camera and that far range of hills has been created relatively recently by molten rock welling up from within the Earth to fill the fractures in the fragmenting continent – like blood filling and healing a cut in our skin.

When below ground, molten rock is known as magma.  Magma can be erupted out onto the Earth’s surface, when it is called lava – and lava is erupted through volcanoes.  There is an obvious volcano lower left in this scene, quite a small cone, and the undulating ground further away has many more.  The presence of hot springs and steam jets shows that there is still vast amounts of heat not far below the surface of the ground here – the volcanism here is not extinct, it is dormant and it might restart at any time.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.

Technique: OM-1 with 75-150 Zuiko lens at 150mm; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO.

UPDATE: love those blue hills receding off into the distance.  Wish I was still there, clutching a camera – though sadly realising that, to me at least, it might no longer be the same place that I left those 31 years ago.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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