Looking at – and seeing – the world
May 9, 2018 6 Comments
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Red car, parked near trees.
Or, then again, a camera … or an eye … looking only at you …
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film preset; rotated; flipped; near Temple Meads, central Bristol; 20 Apr 2018.
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May 7, 2018 10 Comments
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Early morning near Temple Meads railway station, so early in fact that Harts Bakery wasn’t yet open. Suppressing a primal urge to leave teeth marks on their door, I wandered off along the main road, and there was a bus shelter with a screen that brightly displayed a sequence of adverts which, one after the other, defied the gloom.
One of these adverts was pure white with a tiny spot of blue and, every time it blazed out, the inside of the shelter lit up in bright and joyful sympathy – though sterile and cold as ice, this was an enticing world, a thoroughly modern world, a world trying its best to sell me something. And entranced as I was by this flickering Aladdin’s Cave, only the sobering glimpse of the morning’s cold pavement beyond (together with the thought of Harts’ hot goodies) saved me from its soulless, electronic allure.
Technique: totally blown highlights without a shred of detail accompany intensely black, featureless shadows: the words visual taboo, and anathema too, raise their ugly heads. I can only hope that the Photographic Correctness Police will make me attend a course that will result in The FATman becoming an even more rounded individual.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 212mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film preset; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the High Contrast Smooth preset and selectively restoring colour; Temple Gate, central Bristol; 20 Apr 2018.
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April 28, 2018 2 Comments
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The FATman has you in his (actually rather wonderful) electronic viewfinder!
Or, then again, I’m pointing my camera into an empty building. There’s really not much here. My (double) reflection is given substance by a dark pillar in the building’s interior, and the rest of the picture shows a desolate and completely empty room – left by a business that has moved on – with a large window on the left through which a building in the next street can be faintly be seen.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Classic Chrome film simulation; Quay Street, central Bristol; 20 Apr 2018.
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April 11, 2018 6 Comments
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Three parked cars.
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Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 320 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film preset; rotated; Bedminster, Bristol; 8 Nov 2017.
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March 25, 2018 12 Comments
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A second look at the trees reflected in the lake in the Priddy Mineries Reserve. Rather than viewing them at an angle along the lake’s shore as I did in the previous image (3, below), I’m using a longer telephoto here to look straight at them from the other side of the lake, and this version omits the bright blue reflection of the clear sky.
Once again, the rising sun is lighting up the rising ground behind the lake shore, and the reflection of this colouration is seen in the shot’s foreground. Just above the centre of the shot is the lower ground along the lake’s shore, which has yet to be illuminated by the sun, and which is receiving its light from the clear blue sky. The reflection in the lake of this band of colour is seen just below the image’s centre.
Context from this shoot is here: 3 . Other photos are here: 1 2 .
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Provia/Standard film simulation; Priddy Mineries Reserve, on the Mendip Hills, Somerset; 16 Feb 2018.
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March 24, 2018 11 Comments
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The Priddy Mineries Nature Reserve is found on the Mendip Hills, south of Bristol. It is an area of open ground made rugged by lead mining, and it includes a small lake. I’ve done quite a bit of photography here over the past 15 years, including recently on a very cold, early morning.
Other images from this early morning shoot, already posted, are here: 1 2 .
What is this image looking at? Well, I am standing on one side of the small lake, looking across it towards some small, bare trees on the opposite shore. The sun is just rising behind me, and the lower parts of the trees and the ground around them are still in shadow but, above the shadow, the golden, low angle sunlight is bathing both the upper parts of the trees and the pale brown vegetation on the hillside behind.
It is a very still morning, with barely a ripple on the lake’s surface, and this liquid mirror is reflecting the hillside’s warm, sunlit browns, the bright blue of the clear sky, and the trees’ upper branches.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 106mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Astia/Soft film simulation; Priddy Mineries Reserve, on the Mendip Hills, Somerset; 16 Feb 2018.
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March 11, 2018 11 Comments
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A view eastwards across Chew Valley Lake, just before sunrise.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Chew Valley Lake, Somerset; 16 Feb 2018.
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March 9, 2018 10 Comments
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I left home before dawn on a very frosty morning and ended up, just after sunrise, in the Priddy Mineries nature reserve on the top of the Mendip Hills. To say it was cold is vast understatement, and much of the small lake on the reserve was iced over. The sun was just rising above the horizon, and its nearly horizontal rays illuminated the reeds around the water’s edge.
I metered for the reeds, to catch their golden glow. Below them are their reflections in the still water, and the pale bluish rafts of ice – not yet illuminated by the sun but floating above the water’s dark depths.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Priddy Mineries Reserve, on the Mendips, Somerset; 16 Feb 2018.
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March 2, 2018 14 Comments
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Female Mallard, a common duck species, swimming.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; image rotated; Herons Green, Chew Valley Lake, Somerset; 16 Feb 2018.
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December 27, 2017 16 Comments
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Apartments beside the river.
Turning this image onto its side makes it more abstract, as do the reflections. The combination of blue and orange gets to me.
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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; rotated 90 degrees clockwise; opposite Welsh Back, central Bristol; 15 Dec 2017.
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