Looking at – and seeing – the world
January 7, 2020 28 Comments
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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 .
Click onto the image twice to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 5 Dec 2019.
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December 20, 2019 8 Comments
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The built environment – rigid, cold, blank, straight-sided – and the barely seen, soft and natural roundnesses of a small, warm, living thing.
Click onto the image twice to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 105mm; 6400 ISO; in-camera processing of the raw file, using the Graphite profile; Marsh Street, central Bristol; 29 Nov 2019.
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December 17, 2019 15 Comments
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Sitting in a local pub, awaiting their Festive Meal, which is more or less a complete Christmas dinner, but served up for many weeks before The Great Consumer Festival itself magically dawns. The food is really quite good, and inexpensive too >>> and this Meal was my second act of devotion (nay, of downright enthusiasm!) at this particularly festive culinary shrine, and my wife’s third.
While waiting for food to arrive, I got the TG-5 out and started looking at things. For human interest, there was the genial soul at the bar, downing pints of cider like there was no tomorrow and, to the evident alarm of the barmaids, revealing that he’d just been thrown out of the pub next door for threatening to burn it down. But I was looking for a still life – or at least a stiller and less incendiary life – and so to my wife’s glass of wine.
The subject itself is obvious, while the curving, tilting, patterned surface behind is the table top, catching the light. Something of a Minimalist image really, I suppose, but if you turn your screen upside down (or stand on your head, if that’s what gets to you) and carefully look at the glass, you will see the reflection within of an elderly drinker (yes … that’s right … someone just a bit younger than me …), sitting near us, downing a beer. Ah, that Old Consumer Magic … already here …
Click onto the image twice to see an enlarged version.
Technique: TG-5 at 80mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the B&W 03 profile; south Bristol; 10 Dec 2019.
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December 8, 2019 10 Comments
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Sitting in Browns restaurant, waiting for a breakfast – a second breakfast as it happens – to arrive. I’ve often visited this rather up market venue after hours of early morning photography on Bristol’s streets; its a wonderfully quiet place to relax – and the almost ritualistic presentation of the Full English Breakfast is a minor delight – you can see what I mean here.
But whereas Browns used to have beautiful yellow chairs that caught the sidelight pouring in through the large windows, these are now gone and – in the interval between ordering the meal and receiving it – the place is not so photographically rewarding as it once was – for example here .
But, still, there was a dull red bottle top sitting on the window sill across from my table, and the perforated top of a radiator below it, all with shadows and backlighting courtesy of the light from the large windows.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it further.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 200mm; 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Pop profile; Browns Restaurant, central Bristol; 29 Nov 2019.
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December 5, 2019 12 Comments
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Clear morning, early December.
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 . 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.
Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 4 Dec 2019.
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November 22, 2019 12 Comments
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Walking in autumn, and looking down.
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 100mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 3 Oct 2018.
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November 15, 2019 9 Comments
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I have been posting images of a family of swans swimming quietly away on Cripps River (see links to earlier images below). Here, the three young swans swim off slowly up river. The nearest one’s head is seen in profile as (s)he keeps me cautiously in view. The other two are looking to either side.
Albeit its my picture and I’m inevitably biased, I have to say that I find calm and beauty here. So many things in this world are otherwise, but here, on an insignificant backwater in Somerset, three young birds – momentarily (in the UK sense) and quite unconsciously – have formed themselves into a tableau which to me is visually and emotionally attractive. As is usual, really, the Natural World is always worth looking at, never boring.
Earlier pictures of this meeting with swans are here: 1 2 .
All recent bird pictures are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 .
Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens used in APS-C format to give 450mm; 3200 ISO; in-camera processing of the raw file, including use of the Graphite profile and cropping; no further processing; Cripps River, at Eastern Moor Bridge, on the Somerset Levels east of East Huntspill; 25 Oct 2019.
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November 2, 2019 6 Comments
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Immature Mute Swans, moving slowly away while keeping me cautiously in view, on Cripps River. I’d come upon a family of these birds on the river bank and, keeping quiet and still, started taking pictures. I looked at them, they looked at me and then, unhurriedly and gently, they made their way down to the water’s edge, and slowly moved off upstream.
This is a jpeg generated and cropped in-camera from a raw file, using the Graphite profile, with no further processing in Lightroom. Because my blog has a white background, I’d wondered about adding a thin black border in Silver Efex Pro 2, but then decided to leave these birds floating within a wider whiteness.
Other recent bird pictures are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 .
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens used in APS-C mode to give 450mm; 3200 ISO; in-camera processing of the raw file, including use of the Graphite profile and cropping; no further processing; Cripps River, at Eastern Moor Bridge, on the Somerset Levels east of East Huntspill; 25 Oct 2019.
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October 24, 2019 8 Comments
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Field gate, with baler twine.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it.
Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 185mm; 800 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid v2 profile and selectively desaturating colour; Capture NX2; Tadham Moor, on the Somerset Levels southwest of Wedmore; 25 Sept 2019.
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October 15, 2019 14 Comments
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I am The Light
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The Crossing of the Striped Horse
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