ARCHIVE 304 – SWAN PREENING (MONO)

 

 

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Mute Swan preening in the harbour at Mevagissey, Cornwall; 24 Oct 2012.

Two of these beautiful waterbirds appear very much at home in this harbour – no doubt vastly encouraged by the people who regularly feed them!  Having been fed, this pair hung around right below the quay, and I was able to look right down on top of them.

This is a Minimalist shot.  There are comparitavely few tones, and the shapes are dominated by the huge, oval mass of the bird’s body, with the neck writhing snake-like back over the closed wing, trying to reach somewhere awkward.  My gaze was attracted to the contrast in shape between the bird as a whole and this sinuous neck.

The bird’s face is hardly seen – just the dark skin around the eyes and the base of the bill – but this is sufficient to give some focus to the shot – and the eye following the sinuous neck back arrives at this small area of black.

I’ve cropped the shot quite closely, so that the bird appears so large that it seems to be bursting out of the frame.  But keeping the dark backdrop up against the right vertical of the frame, and so preserving that soft and beautifully curving breast, was totally mandatory!

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 800 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2, using the Darken Contrast Vignette as a jumping off point.

UPDATE: very much a long-term favourite of mine, for the reasons given above.  The simplicity of this image is really the thing; Minimalism; less is more.  Looking at it again this morning, my eye is also drawn to those half-seen little bits of plumage detail along the bird’s flank, along the image’s bottom margin.

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ARCHIVE 301 – HERRING GULL, WITH SEAWEED (MONO)

 

 

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Herring Gull and seaweed on the beach at St Ives, Cornwall; 24 Apr 2012.

As with Moorings at St Ives, here, this was taken looking down onto the beach from West Pier.  The gull was resting on the sands below the pier and, as I looked over, he tilted his head sideways, to look upwards and give me a long and very wary stare.  Because his head is tilted onto its side, the beach and its seaweed appear to be on a vertical surface behind him.

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; converted to mono and further manipulated with Silver Efex Pro 2.

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ARCHIVE 291 – RED WINDOW (MONO + COLOUR)

 

 

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Penzance, Cornwall; 8 Oct 2013.

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s Film Noir 1 preset, with selective restoration of colour.

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STILL LIFE 94 – A VIEW OF THE SEA (MONO + COLOUR)

 

 

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Yes, you can see the sea, but the sign shouts No Entry and the walls and hedges are also there to keep you out – this is a landscape of exclusion.  But maybe that tiny, far distant gate beckons, just maybe it does.

Using SEP2 to restore colour to a black and white image.  Only the road sign is close to true colour, all else is (purposely) undersaturated.  I read somewhere, recently, that our eyes instinctively react – often negatively –  to oversaturation of colour in images, the parallel was drawn with eating overspiced food.  But we are apparently far more tolerant of undersaturated colours, in fact we often find them attractive.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that larger version once again.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 160mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Full Dynamic Harsh preset and selectively restoring colour; Lizard Point, Cornwall; 19 Oct 2017.
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STILL LIFE 93 – SECURITY LIGHT (MONO)

 

 

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Bars to keep you out, bars to keep you in.  Either way, the light has you.

Composition: But not bars at all in fact, only darker stripes on a wall that have been given a high contrast look in SEP2, and the addition (also in SEP2) of a thick black border to contain and enhance the overall effect.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Silhouette preset; Porthleven, Cornwall; 18 Oct 2016.
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STILL LIFE 92 – SEASCAPE

 

 

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Study in blue – looking out to sea from Lizard Point, Cornwall; 19 Oct 2016.

Composition: a Minimalist image, take away the fluffy cloudlets and there’s really not much here, although it might still (just) work sans nuages.  But I like these little clouds – their shapes, fluffiness and colour – and the way they are at once separate from the dense, dark overcast – their relationship to this overcast is rather like that of little children skipping along beside their humourless, stolid, heavily pacing parents.  There is also that thin, linear break in the parental overcast just above these cloudlets – is it the trace of a smile? – perhaps their parents are not so humourless after all!

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto the larger version to enlarge it again.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujifilm lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom.
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BIRDS 92 – HERRING GULL

 

 

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Adult Herring Gull, Porthleven, Cornwall; 18 Oct 2016.

A big, meaty bird, a bird to be taken seriously – and particularly so if its trying to steal your lunch!  The dark streaking shows it to be in winter plumage.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click again on the larger version to further enlarge it.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujifilm lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom.
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ARCHIVE 276 – PENZANCE MANNEQUIN, SUNSWEPT (MONO)

 

 

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Mannequin in a shop window, Penzance, Cornwall; 14 Sept 2011.

We were in Penzance on a brilliantly sunny day and potential pictures were all around – I’ve already posted some here.  This dummy was in a window facing straight into the blinding glare, and the combination of her extravagant hat and the patterns that the rim of this hat spread over her blankly staring face drew me towards her.  Post-capture, I thought of enhancing the whites of her eyes but decided that they’re ok as they are.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2.

UPDATE: after all this time, still very much amongst my very favourite images.  I’ve found that to be a thing about blogging – I post an image that I’m (nearly always!) totally enthusiastic about at the time, but I’ve noticed that attitude can change over time, so that sometimes I can look back at past posts, and either think their images simply ok or, then again, not really that good.  But then there are the images that, old as they may be, I still feel really good about – and here is one.  And this is a healthy process, I think, probably one that we all do – we change over time, our visual perceptions and tastes change over time, we are moving on.

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BIRDS 91 – BIRD OF ROCKY SEASHORES

 

 

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Turnstone in the main car park, Penzance, Cornwall.

Turnstones are birds of rocky and often wild seashores, where they live up to their name by using their bills to turn over stones in search of food.

But here in Penzance, in the main car park beside the harbour – and along the promenade in nearby St Ives too – they regularly come up amongst us humans when the tide is in, searching for scraps.  In St Ives especially, people are intrigued by these little birds scurrying around their feet, thinking them youngsters because they are so small.  I bought a pasty on St Ives seafront, sat down to eat it,  and had several around my feet within moments – it was delightful to have them so close, and they gobbled down every scrap of food dropped for them.

Technique: as an ex-birder and someone who will always have an intense liking for birds (for me, their presence unquestionably boosts Quality Of Life), this shot is partly of ornithological interest – here is a little denizen of rocky and often wild coasts, usually observed only distantly, that has taken to foraging openly in a very busy, completely artificial, human environment.  But to me also, in terms of composition, this image says something else too – here is the Natural World, very much overshadowed by, and under threat from, the requirements and encroachments of the Human World.

There are other pictures of these Turnstones, all from St Ives, here, here and here.  Turnstones are mostly brownish above in their winter plumage, but beautiful orange-brown tints appear on their backs in the summer – traces of which can be seen in a couple of these images.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.  If your browser allows two stages of magnification: choose the larger.

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 280mm; 800 ISO; 20 Oct 2016.
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ARCHIVE 270 – REFLECTION OF A SMALL BOAT

 

 

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The prow of a small boat in Mevagissey harbour, Cornwall, on a still morning; 24 Oct 2012.

I think this must be the most perfect reflection photo I’ve ever taken.  Conditions were ideal – an overcast morning with barely a whiff of breeze. 

This boat was moored at the quay, and the rusting chain is its mooring line.

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

D700 with 70-300 Nikkor at 240mm; 5000 ISO.

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