ARCHIVE 583 – AUTUMN 2

 

 

.

Autumn leaves form a carpet around the Hazel in our back garden; 30 Oct 2009.

Used away from the horizontal, the fisheye lens has given the whole photo the appearance of showing an elevated ridge in the ground.  Back beyond the Hazel’s trunks, the patches of green lawn appear to be sloping down to either side.  And the nearest leaves seem to be bulging up towards the camera, and to be swirling in a circular fashion – which is an effect I like.

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

Technique: D700 with Sigma 15mm full frame fisheye lens; 800 ISO.

.
.
.

ARCHIVE 581 – FISHEYE LENS MEETS IRON AGE HOUSE

 

 

.

This is not some huge mushroom, although that’s what it reminds me of every time I see it.  It is in fact a side view of a house in a reconstructed Iron Age village, near Westhay on the Somerset Levels.

The house is round, with walls made of wattle and daub, which is a building technique over 6,000 years old where straw mixed with wet clay, dung, etc is plastered (daubed) onto a wooden frame (the wattle) and left to harden and dry.  The roof of the hut is thatched, and it overhangs the walls quite a lot, to help keep them dry in bad weather.

The photo was taken looking at the hut side-on, using a full frame fisheye lens.  The extremely wide angle view of this lens encompasses the full diameter of the hut, as well as some of the thatched roof.  But the thing which really baffles my eyes here is that cut logs – firewood – have been stacked around the house’s wall, to dry more speedily beneath the overhanging roof.  The pale, cut ends of these logs catch the eye and – for me at least – provide a distraction that prevents identification of what otherwise might be a reasonably straightforward structure.  The faintly bluish grey wall of the house can just be glimpsed between the tops of the logs and the gloom of the overhanging thatch.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended, for greater clarity.

.

.

.

ARCHIVE 518 – MY GARDEN AND ME

 

 

.
“My Garden and Me”; 4 May 2008.  Cowslips and Forget-Me-Nots, which are always left to go completely to seed before being mown, form a glowing and increasingly large patch of yellow and blue in our garden each spring.

The apparent falling away of the ground around my feet is due to the distortion produced by the fisheye lens when it is pointed away from the horizontal.

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

Technique: F6 with Sigma 15mm full frame fisheye; Fuji Provia 400X colour slide film, rated at 500 ISO.
.
.
.

ARCHIVE 462 – FATman WITH A FISHEYE (MONO)

 

 

.

The FATman using a fisheye lens on Tadham Moor on the Somerset Levels; 11 Dec 2013.

The tall, dark but not handsome shadow lower left is me, taking this photo with a full-frame fisheye, which has a 180 degree field of view across the diagonal.  I’m tilting this wild lens slightly downwards, and so the horizon is slightly bowed upwards.

I’m standing at a small crossroads that I know very well and love very much.  To the left, out of view, is the Magic Carpark.  Straight on is Totney Drove, which rolls on westwards towards Rattling Bow and Westham.  And to the right is Jack’s Drove, which I often mention, making off northwards towards Tealham Moor.  Jack’s Drove is flanked by one of the water-filled ditches, the rhynes (rhymes with “scenes”), that are the field boundaries in this very damp area, and pale lengths of corrugated iron have been built into the rhyne’s bank to (try to!) prevent the road from collapsing into the waterway.

Technique: D700 with Sigma 15mm fisheye lens; 200 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s Triste2 preset.

UPDATE: to me, this is a very well known and indeed, treasured, spot – very simple and completely real, and I ask little else.  But time moves on.  Back behind my shadow there is a big dark tree with something pale standing up in front of it.  The dark tree is in fact two big dark trees, while the pale object is the dead stump of a third tree.  The three of these trees were standing beside a rhyne (see above).

Well, four points in time.  I have a wonderful book of black and white pictures from the Levels: Wetland – Life in the Somerset Levels.  This book was published in 1986, and it has a picture of this spot, showing all three of these trees alive and in full leaf: that white stump was the largest and hence I imagine the oldest of these three trees.  Then there is this picture from 2013: the largest tree is now a dead, white stump but the other two are still alive.  However, I visited the spot after much flooding on 31 Mar 2014, and one of the other two trees had toppled over, while the other was leaning at a dangerous angle – that is the problem here when flooding saturates the ground, the peat and clay soils are converted to something approaching the consistency of blancmange, so that the roots of any leaning tree are unable to keep it upright, and it topples over – the scene in 2014 is here .  And so to today, 2020: the old white stump still stands here, but the stumps of the other two are barely visible, having been moved around when the farmers dredge out the rhynes every year.

As Dylan Thomas put it, “Time passes.  Listen.  Time passes.”.

.
.
.

ARCHIVE 373 – OUR HAZEL, IN AUTUMN

 

 

.

Autumn leaves form a carpet around the Hazel in our back garden; 30 Oct 2009.

Used away from the horizontal, the fisheye lens has given the whole photo the appearance of showing an elevated ridge in the ground.  Back beyond the Hazel’s trunks, the patches of green lawn appear to be sloping down to either side.  And the nearest leaves seem to be bulging up towards the camera, and to be swirling in a circular fashion – which is an effect I like.

Technique: D700 with Sigma 15mm full frame fisheye; 800 ISO.

.
.
.

ARCHIVE 284 – TREE MEETS MAN

 

 

.
An Oak meets me in the autumn garden; 18 Nov 2013.

I’m freely mobile but the tree is not – and I can speak but, as far as I know, the tree cannot – and therefore I must be the one doing the meeting and greeting?  

How did Gershwin put it? … ” It ain’t necessarily so … it ain’t necessarily so …”.

D800 with 15mm Sigma fisheye lens; 800 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.

.
.
.

ARCHIVE 271 – FATman WITH A FISHEYE (MONO)

 

 

.
FATman with a fisheye lens on Tadham Moor; the Somerset Levels, 11 Dec 2013.

The tall, dark but not handsome shadow lower left is me, taking this photo with a full-frame fisheye lens, which has a 180 degree field of view across the diagonal.  I’m tilting this wild lens slightly downwards, and so the horizon is slightly bowed upwards.

I’m standing at a small crossroads that I know very well and love very much.  To the left, out of view, is the Magic Carpark.  Straight on is Totney Drove, which rolls on westwards towards Rattling Bow and Westham.  And to the right is Jack’s Drove, which I often mention and photograph, making off northwards towards Tealham Moor.  Jack’s Drove is flanked by one of the water-filled ditches, the rhynes (rhymes with “scenes”), that are the field boundaries in this very damp area, and pale lengths of corrugated iron have been built into the rhyne’s bank to (try to!) prevent the road from collapsing into the waterway.

Up from my shadow is a large, dark Willow (the largest tree in the frame), and in front of this is a pale Willow stump – which is the subject this other post.

D700 with Sigma 15mm fisheye; 200 ISO; starting at Silver Efex Pro 2’s Triste2 preset.

.
.
.

ARCHIVE 131 – SKYSCAPE OVER TEALHAM (MONO)

 

.
A squall bears down on Tealham Moor, on the Somerset Levels south of Wedmore; 15 Aug 2006.

The fisheye lens is pointed slightly upwards, which makes the horizon describe a graceful arc.  A few bushes and trees, the dimly seen rail of a gate and some small pools give substance to the land. 

The clouds are darkened to add drama (March 2015 note – darkened too much down towards lower right, I think), and I’ve added a faintly creamish tone, which is rather a favourite of mine.

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

F6 with 15mm Sigma fisheye; Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide, rated at 125 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2.
.
.
.

ARCHIVE 111 – OUR HAZEL, IN AUTUMN

 

 

.
Autumn leaves form a carpet around the Hazel in our back garden; 30 Oct 2009.

Used away from the horizontal, the fisheye lens has given the whole photo the appearance of showing an elevated ridge in the ground.  Back beyond the Hazel’s trunks, the patches of green lawn appear to be sloping down to either side.  And the nearest leaves seem to be bulging up towards the camera, and to be swirling in a circular fashion – which is an effect I like.

D700 with Sigma 15mm full frame fisheye; 800 ISO.

.
.
.

SOMERSET LEVELS 170 – THATCH (MONO)

USE YOUR PC’s F11 KEY TO VIEW THIS PAGE FULLSCREEN

 

.

The thatched roof of a reproduction Iron Age hut at the former Willows Garden Centre, near Westhay; 28 May 2006.

Filling the frame with a subject is often good.  And adding a distinct focal point to such compositions, especially if they are filled with a repeating pattern, can be useful.  There is no distinct focal point here, but maybe we can count the well seen and sharply focused area of thatch at and just below the photo’s centre.  And the close-in use of the fisheye has made that area of thatch bulge out to greet us.

F6 with 15mm Sigma fisheye; Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide rated at 125 ISO; can’t recall anything about the mono processing, except that it has a pale vignette!

.

.

.