Looking at – and seeing – the world
September 18, 2020 4 Comments
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Standing on a lawn, beside a fence, as the sun rose.
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 46mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Modern 01 profile; south Bristol; 27 Aug 2020.
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August 11, 2020 8 Comments
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Floods on Tadham Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 23 Nov 2012.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – highly recommended.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2, using the High Key 2 preset as a starting point.
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June 3, 2020 12 Comments
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Fences and flags, keeping people apart – physically, mentally – separating “us” from “them”, creating division, creating alienation.
Flags, bestowing an often dubious identity and sense of unity. Heroes fight for their flags, traitors fight for others’ flags, and mercenaries fight for, well, what makes the world go round. And never forget, whoever wins the war will write the history.
And then fences: keeping some people out, keeping others in. And if you can’t decide whether you’re being kept out or kept in, well then maybe you’re sitting on the …
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Technique: TG-5 at 28mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Modern 07 profile; Capture NX2; south Bristol; 30 May 2020.
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May 18, 2020 10 Comments
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Magpie flying over farmland beside East Water Lane, on the Mendip Hills, Somerset; 7 Aug 2014.
I had in mind a Minimalist composition consisting only of the tree and the barbed wire and its fence posts, when a noisy group of Magpies appeared and by luck I caught this one. The pale areas of its plumage merge with the backdrop, eating into its outline. But it is flying towards the left, with the black cone of its head, neck and breast on the left, and its long, thin, black tail stretching out behind. Its wings are frozen by the high shutter speed, held up above its body.
One way of looking at this: of the three elements in the composition, the tree and the fence are static, with the third element flying into their space / surroundings. Then again, the fence may be marching out towards the right, with its posts roped together for safety, and gradually disappearing down into a dip in the ground, or vice versa. Everything is what it seems, until we start thinking about it.
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Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Antique Portrait preset.
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May 6, 2020 10 Comments
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Walking in the lockdown, and – deja vu – finding another car beside another new fence lit by the bright, early morning sun; this one had just been sprinkled by a light rain shower.
The earlier post is here .
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); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 1 May 2020.
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May 3, 2020 12 Comments
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Walking in the lockdown, and looking at a path through modern housing. Whenever I walk through this housing estate I glance down this little path and it never fails to visually attract me. For sure, there are many other such paths in this area, but the others all have extraneous visual clutter, notably other objects eg houses visible in the background. LOL! in the Lord of the Rings there is The One Ring, and here there is The One Path!
I’ve photographed this path before, and that picture is below – and they are different pictures! First, the framing is slightly different. The shot below has a lower aspect, and shows almost none of the sky, which was grey and featureless, whereas cotton wool clouds and blue sky are quite a feature of the upper shot. Second – and most importantly for photographers – the lighting is different. The picture below was shot on a grey, overcast day, so there are almost no shadows and the picture is full of clear detail – for example, the colour of the path is better seen, as are the two, closely juxtaposed inspection covers on the path. On a grey day like this, the only real shadows are beneath vehicles. But the upper shot has quite strong directional lighting, the sun is not far above the horizon, and there is a lot of form and shadow in the white fence and the pruned hedge – and also the curving shadow of the street light on the hedge.
And I may have processed these two images slightly differently, though I do see that they both use the Camera Vivid profile in Lightroom.
Anyway, in summary, I suppose, the lower shot is perhaps expressionless or even deadpan – this is what the place looks like, in some detail, with no visual frills. Whereas the upper shot does have frills: its more colourful, with the strong directional lighting producing some modeling – chiaroscuro, the interplay of light and shadow – and a greater range of tones too, from the white clouds to black shadows.
So >>> do you have a preference here? Which one – if any – do you prefer??? And why?
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Earlier pictures of a paths through modern housing are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 . Each will open in a separate window.
Click onto each image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique for the upper image: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 31 Mar 2020.
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April 25, 2020 17 Comments
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A photo from sometime ago, using a technique that now seems to me to be from another age. The camera was a Nikon F6, a simply wonderful film SLR of great quality, and the last of the professional range SLRs that Nikon made prior to the market being taken over by digital cameras. But the real point of interest here is the film. Most of us – or perhaps the more senior of us … – will have shot colour transparency film – colour slides, those little pictures in cardboard or plastic frames that could be looked at through a viewer, or far better viewed using a slide projector and screen. But Agfa Scala was a wonderful, 200 ISO black and white slide film that could be push processed to 1600 ISO, 3200 ISO and beyond, and which was simply, well, exciting, to use. Also, in those far off days, I used a tripod for shots like this, whereas in these days of excellent quality image stabilisation and image sensors that give very acceptable results at high ISOs, my tripod stays in the boot of my car.
Also, I avoid garden centres like the plague, but the former Willows Garden Centre was something quite different – it was just what I like, tatty around the edges; and it also sold good local produce; and it employed disabled people in a very basic, down to earth cafe that, amongst other things, could whip up wonderful, large Full English Breakfasts, and tea/coffee strong enough to make your hair stand on end, at the drop of a hat >>>> just the thing for very early, very cold winter mornings!
The picture shows one of the fence’s stout uprights, to which panels of withies – pliable Willow stems – are tied with string.
But, gentrification is occurring even on the Levels, and what has this tatty, much loved, down at heel garden centre become? Well, its now an art gallery. Yes, well, enough said. And the food available is simply not what it was, and so I no longer call in there. Well, that’s how it is. Life moves on … and, as I’ve often quoted, “Time passes. Listen. Time passes.” (Dylan Thomas).
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Technique: F6 with 80-200 Nikkor lens at 200mm; Agfa Scala monochrome slide film rated at 400 ISO; tripod; the former Willows Garden Centre, near Westhay, on the Somerset Levels; 8 Mar 2005.
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April 6, 2020 10 Comments
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Walking the locked down suburbs: sunrise, a new fence and a car.
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); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 31 Mar 2020.
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April 5, 2020 Leave a comment
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Walking in the lockdown, on a gloriously sunny morning – and being grateful for the TG-5’s wide angle lens.
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.
Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 250 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 31 Mar 2020.
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March 25, 2020 12 Comments
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Construction work was being done in a Bristol park, and a thin wire security fence had been erected around the site to keep it secure from the public. While sturdy, the wires of the fence were also thin, so that poorly sighted people, drunks, etc might be injured walking into them. And so a bright warning ribbon was strung out along the fence, to make it more visible.
Most of the ground behind the fence was in shadow but, on this first day of December, there were still some golden brown autumn leaves on the ground, and these caught the light a little. I could have removed these in post-processing but I didn’t, because I think they add something, if only a little, to the overall effect. The thin dark lines that cross the ribbon are the wires of the fence.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 300mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Astia/Soft profile; image rotated and flipped; central Bristol; 1 Dec 2017.
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