Looking at – and seeing – the world
July 4, 2020 8 Comments
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Early morning clouds over our garden; 22 Apr 2013.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
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Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens; 400 ISO; all underexposed to various degrees in Capture NX2 to saturate colour and bring out detail.
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June 22, 2020 8 Comments
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Looking up over our garden this morning – clouds and a contrail caught by the rising sun; Bristol; 22 Apr 2013.
I was just on the point of making that greatest of luxuries, the morning’s first cup of tea, when I glanced out of the window. And then came one of the great improbables – a FATman moving at a rate of knots – in a frantic dash out into the back garden!
I love skies and clouds but, especially when the sun is just appearing or disappearing, and when contrails are moving steadily across the sky, things happen quickly – and there’s no time to hang about!
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: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 135mm; 400 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Fine Art High Key preset.
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June 19, 2020 7 Comments
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Snow falling in our back garden; Bristol; 5 Jan 2010.
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Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 1600 ISO; converted to mono in Alien Skin’s Exposure 2, and given the look of Fuji Neopan 1600 black and white film.
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June 14, 2020 4 Comments
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“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.
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June 11, 2020 21 Comments
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Hazel leaves, in our back garden; 25 June 2013.
This was captured with a definite visual plan – the eye enters the frame from the left, very soon hits the brightest component, and then moves rightwards and upwards along the “tail” of darker objects leading to the upper right corner of the frame. The eye might then exit the frame in the upper right corner: having the final element of the “tail” there might stop it, or it might have been better to have this corner dark.
I never cease to marvel at the beauty of Nature. What am I looking at here, what is my camera recording? Well, light that has travelled 93 million miles from Our Star, to partially shine through a small component of one of Earth’s myriad lifeforms.
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Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 250 ISO.
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May 15, 2020 6 Comments
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Seeding grasses; 25 June 2013: part of a project I was doing in my back garden, in Bristol, seven years ago. I get up early on the morning anyway, and so the project’s simple plan was to down a cup of strong tea and get out into the garden early in the day, using mainly this 70-300 telezoom (the lens I continue to be married to) or a 105mm macro lens. >>> but LOL!!! >>> I tend to be a little less athletic and supple now than I was then so that, if I were to attempt such photos again, I may need the emergency services to get me back up onto my feet! Well, after all, one must suffer for one’s art … 🙂 …
For those looking at composition, my eye tends to start appraising the image from the left, and is initially caught by the in focus subject of the shot, which is set against a somewhat darker background.
This subject is mirrored by the similarly orientated (i.e. repeating patterns) but out of focus stems further back, which are set against, and which tend to blend into, a rather paler backdrop. These diffuse stems give the shot depth.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 800 ISO.
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April 3, 2020 9 Comments
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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 …”.
Technique: D800 with 15mm Sigma fisheye lens; 800 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.
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February 14, 2020 9 Comments
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Clicking onto the image opens a larger version in a separate window.
Clicking onto the “early morning” tag (below) opens more images from the early hours of the day.
Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 6400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 22 Jan 2020.
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October 16, 2019 9 Comments
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Sunrise glances across a trim front garden in the outer suburbs. The baby bushes, all in a row, are lit by its welcome radiance.
And there is a little fence too which, while hopefully not bereft of any hint of the ornamental, is basically the symbolic barrier between two privately owned residences. The fence casts a long shadow, as well it might in this materialistic world.
There are earlier Modern Housing posts here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . Each will open in a separate window.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it.
Technique: TG-5 at 49mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the B&W 03 profile; south Bristol; 18 Sept 2019.
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October 10, 2019 8 Comments
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Front gardens >>> tasteful modern Minimalism perhaps >>> or yet another example of the ongoing subjugation of All Things Green to convenience and The Age of the Car?
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Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 250 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 19 Aug 2019.
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