BRISTOL 133 – CITY LIFE 2 (MONO)

 

 

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Life in the city: artificial, unnatural but not unnecessary; noisy, closed in, crowded, claustrophobic.

There is an earlier city life post here: 1 .

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

Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 125mm; 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid V2 picture control; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the High Structure Smooth preset; Baldwin Street, central Bristol; 10 May 2019.
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BRISTOL 132 – CITY LIFE (MONO)

 

 

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This image is best viewed enlarged: click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – certainly recommended.

Life in the city, for four people.

At upper left, a blond woman walks beneath the trees that border the river.  At this time of the morning, perhaps going to work.

While a man – perhaps a barman – takes a break with a hot drink and a cigarette (only just visible!) outside the door of a pub.

Another man hurries into the frame from the right, engrossed, on his phone – and hence walking through a world that, for the moment at least, he is barely aware of.

And lastly, encased in his classy, mobile, metal and glass machine, another man sits in a traffic queue, waiting for the lights to change.

A moment (1/640th of a second, to be exact) in the lives of four people, a moment in the life of a city, early on a Friday morning in May.

Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 122mm; 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid V2 picture control; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Full Contrast And Structure preset; Baldwin Street, in Bristol city centre; 10 May 2019.
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PEOPLE 369 – DRINKING LAGER (MONO)

 

 

Having lunch with an old and very valued friend; feeling good and drinking lager, as it happens.  And I asked her to take some shots of me with the TG-5.  Not at all an ideal camera for this, far too much of the background in focus and light conditions tricky but, anyway, here I am, sucking down the old Electric Sauce and feeling the benefits thereof.

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Critique: the TG-5 not doing too badly at 3200 ISO.  However, as my old friend was driven to admit, the whole experience left her shaken … but not stirred …   And also, you know, I’m just not sure she’s caught my best side …
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Technique: take one old and very valued friend, several glasses of lager and one TG-5 at 40mm (equiv), and shake well to mix in all the goodness and downright friendliness; 3200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Neutral preset and adding a light Coffee tone; lunching, drinking and laughing in a pub in south Bristol; 14 Mar 2019.
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PEOPLE 368 – GOING TO WORK 91

 

 

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Going to work, past Bristol’s brightly coloured (and decorated) houses.

You can see a summary of the Going to Work series here .

Earlier images from this series can be found 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 43 44 45  46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 .  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 enlarge it further – recommended.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; St Luke’s Road, south Bristol; 29 Jan 2019.
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PEOPLE 367 – WRESTLING WITH THE BARS, TRYING TO ESCAPE

 

 

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Selfie – my shadow against a metal fence – with the camera, as I remember it, held in my right hand.

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

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, desaturating colour and using the Camera Natural film simulation; south Bristol; 26 Feb 2019.
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OUTER SUBURBS 88 – STREET SCENE 6: TWO WORLDS

 

 

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Looking at two worlds and, starting in from the left as we westerners do, first is the brash, colourful, in your face, psychological manipulation of the advertising agencies and consumerism – “EAT THIS AND YOU’LL BE HAPPY!!!“.  Backed up, of course, with the wonderful news that you don’t even have to budge from your sofa to get it, since this alluring chunk of high vitamin, high fibre (sic), instant gratification will be delivered straight to your door. 

But on getting across to the other side of the image, well, this is another world indeed – two standing, one slumped, waiting for the bus to work on a cold, dull morning; this is reality, dull, repetitive, prosaic; this is not the multicoloured fantasy of the advertising world, this is actual life.

There are earlier Street Scene posts here: 1 2 3 4 5 .  Each will open in a separate window.

The first image in the Outer Suburbs series, with context, is here: 1 .  Subsequent images are here: 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 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 53a 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 .  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 enlarge it further – recommended.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; south Bristol; 29 Jan 2019.
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OUTER SUBURBS 87 – MODERN LIFE 8: COMMUNICATION

 

 

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This image is best viewed enlarged: click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it further – recommended.

Turning a corner, on a street and, to my left, three means of communication, three means of getting your message across.

First, an image, an image of a man as it happens, another image in a world already swamped in images.  And this image – of course – is contained within yet another image, the image posted here.  So I’m contributing to the problem >>> at this point I could get into repeated utterances of “Mea culpa!!!” (I always knew a classical education would come in useful … eventually … ) along with energetic thumping of my quailing breast, but I’m wary of Repetitive Strain Injury, so what the hell?

Then tags, street art, graffiti, call them what you will.  Desires to be known, to be acknowledged; proofs of presence, of existence even, in an increasingly online and lonely world.  And so, via my totally indispensable paper diary, to Herbert Prochnow (1897-1998): “A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.”.

And finally the phone, a landline, archaic now, communication from my childhood but, still, eminently effective.  As Lennon and McCartney so succinctly put it, “You know my name, look up the number.“.

There are earlier Modern Life posts here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 .  Each will open in a separate window.

The first image in the Outer Suburbs series, with context, is here: 1 .  Subsequent images are here: 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 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 53a 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 .  Each will open in a separate window.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; south Bristol; 29 Jan 2019.
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PEOPLE 364 – GOING TO WORK 88 (MONO)

 

 

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Winter morning.  Walking to work, perhaps disconsolately, below the railway bridge.

Earlier images from this series can be found 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 43 44 45  46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 .  Each will open in a separate window.

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

Technique: Olympus TG-5 at 40mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film preset; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Full Spectrum preset and adding a light Selenium tone; St Luke’s Road, south Bristol; 29 Jan 2019.
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OUTER SUBURBS 64 – WALKING HOME

 

 

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This picture is best viewed enlarged – get inside it!!!  To do so, click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it further – recommended.

The walk home, below a bridge that carries the railway.  Loneliness?  Perhaps.  But safety too because, as the pavement rises up beside the road, tastefully green railings keep us all safe from the often roaring road below.

And the wonderfully unkempt, purely functional bridge standing above all, enlivened by fading colour, seeping rust and the various proofs of human presence that I see far more as street art than graffiti.  And heights in feet and inches, and metres too, which perhaps sum up this country’s relationship with the rest of Europe … a hot point just now!  But, after nearly seven decades, I’m far more at home with feet and inches – while thanking the Great Good Common Sense that our road signs still show distances in miles, rather than kilometres, and that we still use the pound sterling rather than the euro.

LOL!!! there are two words fashionable at the moment.  The T-word refers to the individual who holds the title, President of the United States.  And then the B-word refers to Brexit: Europe is a very good idea, but how dreadfully sad it is that the EU was not allowed to remain as a bloc in which the countries just had free trade and mutual defence cooperation agreements with each other.  I have spoken to so many others who share this sadness.

The first image in the Outer Suburbs series, with context, is here: 1 .  Subsequent images are here: 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 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 53a 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 .  Each will open in a separate window.

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Natural film simulation; south Bristol; 16 Jan 2019.
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ARCHIVE 396 – PEOPLE DRINKING TEA (MONO)

 

 

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A couple having a hot drink beside the beach in the harbour at St Ives, Cornwall; 10 Oct 2013.

The man is hunched over towards the right, sipping his cuppa, while the woman is inclined towards the left, intent on screwing shut her bottle of milk.  Their two shapes tend to come together somewhat, in the shape of an arch or dome, an effect heightened by her inclined hair bun.  I’ve tried to enhance this impression of togetherness by adding a slight, pale, circular vignette.

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

Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s Full Dynamic Smooth preset; mild copper toning.

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