ARCHIVE 590 – 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.

Looking at this now, in 2020, I wonder how I might characterise him in human terms >>> big, feathered, aggressive, opportunistic hooligan might do it – and, in my eyes, absolutely wonderful too.  Well, I am after all a birder but it goes back much further than that: I grew up on the coast and these birds were a constant and noisy part of my younger years, they are in effect a part of who I am, I think.  I can well remember taking my first job away from the coast, in Milton Keynes of all places: there were no gulls there and I really felt their absence, it was somehow like being in a very different place.

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

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujifilm lens at 300mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom.
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ARCHIVE 582 – BALUSTRADE, BACKLIT

 

 

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Backlit plaster balustrade in a restaurant; Newquay, Cornwall; 13 Sept 2011.

We were having lunch – my snout was squarely in the trough –  when a burst of sunlight opened up this scene right beside our table.  The long end of a short zoom was just enough to capture these repeating patterns, fading off into a distance which is actually only a few feet away, beside the next table in the room. 

Altering the orientation of the image gives the impression of lighting pouring up from below.  The colours are minimal, but they certainly give this shot an edge over monochrome versions.

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

Technique: D700 with 24-120 Nikkor lens at 120mm; 1600 ISO; image horizontally flipped and then rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

UPDATE: looking at this anew, after nine years, I’m struck by those long dark curves coming in from the left.  They rise very gently – less is more! – as they move across the frame, after which they peak, falter – and descend abruptly into the image’s far more active right third.

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ARCHIVE 556 – ELDERLY WOMAN, WAITING FOR SOMEONE

 

 

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Elderly woman, waiting for someone, in the main street of Perranporth, Cornwall; 12 Sept 2013.

I like the way that she is sandwiched within – and only partly emerging from –  a world of reflections.  She is real, but many of the other contents of the picture are the reflected images of things that are not, in a material sense, within the frame.

Aside from the parts within plain view, much more of her is visible through the shop window of the Family Butcher.  But because her left hand and arm are protruding sufficiently far left, they are reflected in this window.  Her pale blue jacket harmonises with the paler blue-greys around her.  And a sense of depth is given by the right hand vertical window edge cutting her form, while the wider window edge further left is cut by her hand.

This picture was taken within a very brief timeframe.  As I walked along the pavement, another woman was walking towards me and the elderly lady was just behind her – and gazing about all over the place, looking for the person she was due to meet. 

She turned away to look into the distance, I raised the camera and readied it in one movement, the woman approaching me looked momentarily askance – and I fired.  There was just time for two frames – before the woman in the doorway, catching sight of her friend, was gone.

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

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor at 300mm; 400 ISO.

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ARCHIVE 553 – FIGURE WITH RUCKSACK, DRAINPIPE, STAIRS AND TWO SKYLIGHTS (MONO)

 

 

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Off the main street in Penzance, Cornwall; 8 Oct 2013.

This photo consists of a number of discreet segments that fit together like a rectilinear collage.  It was a case of waiting at the bottom of this intriguing corridor, somewhere I’ve photographed before, until a figure walked into that square of featureless white brightness.

The figure is anonymous.  We see quite a bit of him – he appears not too old, and used to toting his bag – and we see the illuminated, horizontal rectangle of his world – he is walking in the open air, along a side street. He may be aware of the steps on his right, but he cannot see them as we do, nor can he see the skylights, though he may be aware of the dull light they cast in the otherwise windowless corridor.

We are looking up through a tunnel into his world and can see parts of it as he does, but he cannot see our’s as we do.

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

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 1600 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s Yellowed 2 preset.

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ARCHIVE 544 – LIVE TO RIDE (MONO)

 

 

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Motorbike in St Ives, Cornwall; 24 Apr 2012.

Despite having ridden one (badly) in my misspent youth, I am not any sort of motorbike fan or petrolhead, but these details caught my eye as we headed down through St Ives towards the harbour.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 170mm; 400 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2.

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ARCHIVE 541 – WINDBLOWN

 

 

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Windblown poppy; Newquay, Cornwall; 11 Sept 2013.

I like Newquay.  It is cheap, tatty and unpretentious, and there are so many establishments offering Full English Breakfasts that I could probably stay there for a whole month and eat in a different one each day.  That said, I have the strong suspicion that most of these repasts would be of the pallid and rather tasteless variety but, still, anywhere with this number of breakfasts on offer can’t be all bad.

And, with its famous Fistral Beach facing out into the Atlantic’s rollers,  this little town is a mecca for UK surfers – as well as being the pub, nightclub and “booze / drug yourself silly” capital of the west for youngsters intent upon a good time that they may not remember too much about.

We had a couple of dry days on our short break, but the westerly wind blew throughout and the great white waves smashed into the cliffs and headlands – not that we are in any way surfers, mind!  For a start I can’t swim, and neither of us are at all into such energetic activities. 

There was a ragged flowerbed in front of some kind of religious building sandwiched in between the Houses Of Hedonism along the main drag, and the gusting westerly was sending the flowers in all directions. The waving poppies stood out from the rest, and a quarter of a second at F29 gave this pale and Impressionistic result.

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

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO.

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ARCHIVE 540 – REFLECTION (MONO + COLOUR)

 

 

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The prow of a small boat in Mevagissey harbour, in 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 – recommended.

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor at 240mm; 5000 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2.

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ARCHIVE 537 – CHAIR, WALL AND SIDELIGHTING

 

 

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I enjoy lounging around in holiday chalets and caravans.  Its a wonderful opportunity to sprawl back in comfort and enjoy the moment – and also a good chance to watch how the light interacts with things as the sun moves across the sky. 

Here, with lighting from the left, a chair at the bottom of the stairs throws its shadow onto a rough wall.  The woodwork at upper left is part of the banister of the narrow stairway.

This photo is something of a departure for me as its one of the few times that I’ve used my 50mm lens: most of my images use focal lengths far above or below this “standard” lens, which roughly approximates to human eyes’ field of vision.  I ought to use this lens more often.  It has a very useful maximum aperture of f1.4 and so is good in low light situations, and using the D800 in DX (= APS-C) format, when focal lengths are magnified by 1.5, I end up with a very useful – inspiring, even – 75mm f1.4 chunk of glass.

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

Technique: D800 with 50mm Nikkor lens; 3200 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4; 11 Apr 2016.

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ARCHIVE 517 – HERRING GULL (MONO)

 

 

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Herring Gull: winter plumaged adult at St Ives, Cornwall; 27 Sept 2012.

This individual is sitting on a wall, but I want to show nothing but the bird and its overcast backdrop and so have cropped the wall out.  Mono simplifies the picture, and gives the impression of  a tough and rugged individual used to enduring the dull, overcast, wintery conditions.

These birds have pure white heads in summer, but this one has the streaked head and neck that appears later in the year.

I like the detail in the feathering at lower left, especially the single feather sticking up from the rest.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 800 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2, starting from the Antique Plate 1 preset.

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ARCHIVE 508 – LANDSCAPE NEAR NEWQUAY (MONO)

 

 

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Landscape near Newquay, Cornwall; 23 Oct 2012.

The lines of windblown trees first attracted me to this scene, and then there were the partly seen house and the bold, dark lines of the field boundaries.

Letterbox is an ideal format here, and I’ve used a pale vignette to suggest mistiness around the frame edges.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2, using the Full Contrast and Structure preset as a starting point.

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