OUTER SUBURBS 194 – EARLY MORNING 43

 

 

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Other images in this Early Morning series – from both rural and urban settings, and from Kenya too – are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 .  All will open in separate windows. You can also search on the “early morning” tag, below.

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

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 6 Feb 2020.
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OUTER SUBURBS 190 – HOUSES BY THE MAIN ROAD

 

 

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Walking at dawn, and looking up at the big houses along the main road: one awake, the other asleep.

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

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 29 Jan 2020.
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ARCHIVE 434 – HOUSE ON A FARM

 

 

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House on a farm near Akala, in the far west of Kenya; April 1979.

These are Luo people who live in the immensely fertile far west of Kenya, not far from Lake Victoria – a vast body of water that supplies them with vast quantities of fish, and with frequent thunder storms which keep their land totally green.

The structure consists of mud walls, above which a conical thatched roof is mounted on a great mass of wooden poles. There is quite a gap between the roof and the walls but, in this hot, equatorial area, cold weather is not an issue. This hut has at least two rooms: the doorway to a second room is to the left of the people. The mud walls have decorations drawn straight onto them, and there is an oil lamp hanging up. Notice how everything, including the chest of drawers and some of the pictures hanging on the walls, has cloth covers.

Food and water are not an issue for these people, they live in a wonderfully fecund landscape. But there are diseases – it was here that malaria first got its claws into me, despite my using nets and prophylactics.

Click onto the image to see a slightly enlarged version.

Technique: OM-1 with 28mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide, rated at 64 ISO.
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OUTER SUBURBS 178 – EAST STREET: NEAR ASDA

 

 

1 Looking up under an arch, light spilling in from the left

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Near the Asda supermarket.

The first photo in this East Street series, with context, is here .  Subsequent images are here: 2 .  Each will open in a separate window.

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

Technique: TG-5; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid profile; East Street, Bedminster, south Bristol; 21 Jan 2020.

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2 Love the pose!

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3 The reflected light of the rising sun hitting a frontage; and reflections in the windows too

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OUTER SUBURBS 174 – EARLY MORNING 38

 

 

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Other images in this Early Morning series – from both rural and urban settings, and from Kenya too – are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 .  All will open in separate windows.  You can also search on the “early morning” tag.

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

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 6400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 10 Jan 2020.
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SOMERSET LEVELS 440 – WALKING WESTON’S STREETS 7

 

 

A seaside town, in the winter

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Weston-super-Mare, my home town, on the coast where the Somerset Levels run down into the Bristol Channel – the local, somewhat muddy, version of the sea.  Following a recent reunion with age-old friends there (here), I’ve been visiting Weston again, and walking streets echoing with things remembered – sometimes only half-remembered –  from over half a century ago.

Weston is a seaside town and, like seaside towns the UK over, it is experiencing something of an economic downturn – the era of the family seaside holiday in uncertain British weather is long past, due to cheap holidays in warmer and far more reliable, foreign climes.  So, there is to Weston something of the cheap and cheerful, a – to me, anyway – rather attractive tattiness at the edges, that makes walking here with a camera a pleasure – a definite feeling of not knowing what will appear next.  The Ghost of FATman Past perhaps?  Well, if he gives me half a chance, I’ll photograph him …

And so in Nov 2019 to pictures taken with an open mind – pictures which are, for better or for worse, in the main quite different from the preceding 400+ that I’ve posted of the Somerset Levels.  Some of them may be a little obscure / far out / radical / unexplained /  I don’t know… but I did mention photographing with an open mind, which means looking, on the spur of the moment, at anything and everything …    But, whatever, warts and all, I hope you’ll like (at least some of) these images.  (Click onto them twice to enlarge them)

Earlier posts in this series are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 .

A short history of Weston is here.
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Well, as I told you, Weston’s tatty at the edges >>> which makes it decidedly interesting!  Here, the grassy roof in particular gets to me …

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But as well as being tatty at the edges, Weston has many very desirable and expensive properties, with many very well-heeled retirees – and so to that pillar of Our Green and Materialistic Land, the Estate Agents

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Parking meter – or space alien?

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And just who said the west of England isn’t a centre of culture???  Its just a question of which culture you mean …  So perhaps to an unsettling fact then, that most of my formative years were spent here >> I am, in part, certainly a product of this town.  I have lived in various places, perhaps the most valuable of which, in terms of Life Experience, were 12 years in Kenya – many of those 12 years having been towards the end of my adolescence (this latter phase of Life now having been found to continue to age 32 or so) >>> but Weston will always be my home town, and very much valued as such.

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And finally, punk on Weston’s Grand Pier; somehow very appropriate …

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SOMERSET LEVELS 438 – WALKING WESTON’S STREETS 5

 

 

Looking back at me through autumn leaves – an image confronting an image maker

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Weston-super-Mare, my home town, on the coast where the Somerset Levels run down into the Bristol Channel – the local, somewhat muddy, version of the sea.  Following a recent reunion with age-old friends there (here), I’ve been visiting Weston again, and walking streets echoing with things remembered – sometimes only half-remembered –  from over half a century ago.

Weston is a seaside town and, like seaside towns the UK over, it is experiencing something of an economic downturn – the era of the family seaside holiday in uncertain British weather is long past, due to cheap holidays in warmer and far more reliable, foreign climes.  So, there is to Weston something of the cheap and cheerful, a – to me, anyway – rather attractive tattiness at the edges, that makes walking here with a camera a pleasure – a definite feeling of not knowing what will appear next.  The Ghost of FATman Past perhaps?  Well, if he gives me half a chance, I’ll photograph him …

And so in Nov 2019 to pictures taken with an open mind – pictures which are, for better or for worse, in the main quite different from the preceding 400+ that I’ve posted of the Somerset Levels.  Some of them may be a little obscure / far out / radical / unexplained /  I don’t know… but I did mention photographing with an open mind, which means looking, on the spur of the moment, at anything and everything …    But, whatever, warts and all, I hope you’ll like (at least some of) these images.  (Click onto them to enlarge them)

Earlier posts in this series are here: 1 2 3 4 .

A short history of Weston is here.

View into – and through – a phone kiosk, with the blue doors of public toilets in the background for local colour

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The big, solid, expensive houses of upper class (probably Victorian) Weston, built high up on the southern slopes of Worlebury Hill, looking out over Weston Bay – and solid they are, built of great blocks of the hard, grey Carboniferous Limestone that forms this hill, most probably obtained from the many quarries nearby.  And it was on the top of Worlebury Hill where this geologist – aged about 5 or 6 – found his first fossil, a Carboniferous brachiopod, a type of shellfish, on a limestone fragment in his garden.  Excitingly asking his Mum whether he could bring it into the house, he was told that it was alright as long as it wasn’t alive.  And it was this same Mum who, left penniless after my father disappeared in search of pastures new, scrimped and saved to keep him on at school so that he could eventually fulfil what she knew was his dream, to study geology at university

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Public seating with autumn leaves

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OUTER SUBURBS 161 – STANDING IN THE HALL, LOOKING TOWARDS THE KITCHEN DOOR

 

 

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Visiting friends, and waiting in the dark hall of their large Victorian house.   Beautifully diffused light from their brightly lit kitchen was streaming in through the translucent panels on the door, subtly illuminating the colours of the paintwork: the scene caught my eye.  The wooden bannisters on the stairs ascend in semi-shadow on the left, catching the bright light from the door here and there.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 2 Dec 2019.

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SOMERSET LEVELS 431 – WALKING WESTON’S STREETS

 

 

Uncertain destination

(best viewed enlarged – click onto it)

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Weston-super-Mare, my home town, on the coast where the Somerset Levels run down into the Bristol Channel – the local, somewhat muddy, version of the sea.  Following a recent reunion with age-old friends there (here), I’ve been visiting Weston again, and walking streets echoing with things remembered – sometimes only half-remembered –  from over half a century ago.

Weston is a seaside town and, like seaside towns the UK over, it is experiencing something of an economic downturn – the era of the family seaside holiday in uncertain British weather is long past, due to cheap holidays in warmer and far more reliable, foreign climes.  So, there is to Weston something of the cheap and cheerful, a – to me, anyway – rather attractive tattiness at the edges, that makes walking here with a camera a pleasure – a definite feeling of not knowing what will appear next.  The Ghost of FATman Past perhaps?  Well, if he gives me half a chance, I’ll photograph him …

And so in Nov 2019 to pictures taken with an open mind – pictures which are, for better or for worse, in the main quite different from the preceding 400+ that I’ve posted of the Somerset Levels.  Some of them may be a little obscure / far out / radical / unexplained /  I don’t know… but I did mention photographing with an open mind, which means looking, on the spur of the moment, at anything and everything …    But, whatever, warts and all, I hope you’ll like (at least some of) these images.  (Click onto them to enlarge them)

A short history of Weston is here.

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Wet morning

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Cracked and weathered frontage – built of one of the honey-coloured limestones from the Cotswold area, like Bath Stone.  An older house, once genteel.

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OUTER SUBURBS 141 – EARLY MORNING 23

 

 

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Due to my carelessness, this picture is most probably not sharp.  Thinking of other things (Full English Breakfasts … probably …) I loosed off at 1/13th second when using a 100mm equivalent telephoto >>> and later could only hope that the camera image stabilisation would make it all right.  Anyway, whether said stabilisation has done the job or not, this is my only shot of the scene and here it is!

So >>> walking beside a blaring main road and glancing eastwards, I liked the contrasts between the first faint pinks of the sunrise and the various colours of the house lights.  The Outer Suburbs were awake and preparing to take on whatever the day might throw at them!

Other images in this Early Morning series – from both rural and urban settings, and from Kenya too – are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 .

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 100mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 3 Oct 2019.
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