BRISTOL 130 – THE OUTER SUBURBS (MONO)

 

 

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Bristol’s city centre is actually quite small, it can be walked right across in an hour or so, but it is surrounded by suburbs that are vaster (and often wealthier) on the north, and smaller (and in many parts less well to do) on the south.  Most of my pictures of the city have been from the city centre but here is one quite far out in the southern suburbs.  This is the A37, known as the Wells Road, which is a main artery heading south out of the city towards the tiny city of Wells, and also Yeovil and – that (to me anyway) holiest of holies – the county of Dorset.

The edge of the city is not far ahead, perhaps a couple of miles or so, and beyond that are some of my favourite areas of countryside – the Chew Valley, the Mendip Hills and, of course – perhaps my spiritual home – the Somerset Levels.  This blog has image Categories for each of those areas – see the Categories drop-down list, which can be found in the sidebar, just below the gravatars of readers who have left Comments.

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

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 129mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Provia/Standard film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Antique Portrait preset; south Bristol; 19 July 2016.
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STILL LIFE 238 – BOLLARDS (MONO + COLOUR)

 

 

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Roadside bollards.

There is another image like this here .

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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Film Noir 1 preset, adding a strong selenium tone, and selectively restoring colour; Corn Street, central Bristol; 19 July 2018.

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PEOPLE 342 – GOING TO WORK 72

 

 

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On the way to work:  walking up towards Bristol Bridge, early on a summer’s morning.

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 .  Each will open in a separate window.

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Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using tilting and the Provia/Standard film simulation; near Bristol Bridge, central Bristol; 19 July 2016.
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PEOPLE 304 – GOING TO WORK 38

 

 

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Sunrise glistens on the road, as fast moving rush hour traffic turns sharply into Broad Street.

My ever over-fertile imagination conjures up the thought of the slipstream of these vehicles sending The FATman pirouetting backwards into a nearby fashionable men’s barbering salon (Now then, squire, we don’t serve your type in ‘ere!), but the reach of a 305mm lens does a lot to keep me out of trouble, while my appearance in such an establishment would be more of a surreal fiction than even this blog can support.

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 .  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 yet again.

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Astia/Soft film simulation; Broad Street, central Bristol; 15 Dec 2017.
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STILL LIFE 175 – DUAL CARRIAGEWAY

 

 

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After a morning looking for low angle winter sunlight in the city, I walked back towards some (more!) food and a bus home.  I was walking beside a roaringly busy dual carriageway and the dazzling winter sun – providing at best only the very faintest warmth – was blasting across the road at me from the left.  Looking into the sun, across the road, I turned the X-T2 into portrait orientation and took this picture – which has here been rotated 90 degrees towards the left – anticlockwise – into landscape format.

What was the camera looking at?  The dual carriageway has a central crash barrier, with a stout metal girder above a solid concrete base.  On the left of the shot, this crash barrier throws a harsh black shadow onto the road’s surface.  Then, to the right of that, there is the black tarmac road surface, turned almost silver by the sun’s glare.  And then the thick white line that separates the road’s two inbound lanes.

The lane nearest the camera has a brown surface, to show that it leads to an exit from the dual carriageway.   Autumn leaves have been firmly crushed into this brown surface – in a way that they would not be crushed into real tarmac – until they have become pale and flattened, amorphous streaks of their former selves.  And so to an abstract image.

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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm; 640 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise; Temple Way, central Bristol; 1 Dec 2017.

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STILL LIFE 145 – ROADSIDE WITH PAVEMENT AND DRAIN

 

 

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Somewhere in central Bristol, I can’t remember where.  The pavement is upper right, with the little granite blocks set in it, and it continues around to upper left, with yet more granite blocks and some larger granite setts.

The rest is the road, with two very different surfaces, a round manhole cover and a square drain.

And there is both history and modernity here.  Modernity is represented by the double yellow lines which, loathed by motorists, indicate no parking on penalty of a fine or, far worse, gratis life membership of the Conservative Party.  But the real interesting bit, the history, is that little, straight line of serrated metal on the pavement’s edge, that starts on the right between the drain and the pavement, and then runs up towards the left.  These serrated iron edges to Bristol’s kerbs date from the early 20th century, and were installed to prevent the iron-clad wheels of horse-drawn carts from damaging the stone pavements – you can find out more about them here.

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Technique: X-T2 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 32mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Classic Chrome film simulation; 11 Aug 2017.
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STILL LIFE 128 – CENTRAL RESERVATION

 

 

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The central reservation on a dual carriageway, with pedestrian and car approaching.

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Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 200 ISO; spotmetering; Lightroom; beside Temple Meads railway station, central Bristol; 26 May 2017.
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SOMERSET LEVELS 287 – DAWN, TEALHAM MOOR

 

 

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The view across Tealham Moor, with the first faint flush of sunrise starting to warm the cold dawn light.

The single track Totney Drove, covered in frost, ice, and tyre marks, makes off eastwards towards the trees of Tadham Moor in the distance.  This thin strip of tarmac is at best uneven, but between the two nearest trees it bulges slightly upwards where, on a little bridge, it crosses a manmade waterway known as the North Drain, which empties water from this sodden landscape into the nearby River Brue.  This tiny bridge has metal railings on either side, and glint of the North Drain’s waters can just be seen to either side of them, near the left and right edges of the image.

The striking shape of the tree is the result of being cut back by mechanised shears mounted on the farmer’s tractor.  Adjacent to the drove, within reach of the cutters’ teeth, its profile has been cut back to a sheer vertical, but beyond the cutters’ reach – higher up, and on the side away from the road – it blossoms out in more natural fashion.

More context about this bitterly cold, early morning visit to the Somerset Levels can be found here, and there is another pre-sunrise image here.

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

X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 8,000 ISO; 27 Jan 2017.
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SOMERSET LEVELS 286 – DAWN IN THE HEADLIGHTS

 

 

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Driving in the dawn along Kid Gate Drove, on the western fringes of Tealham Moor; 27 Jan 2017.

I’d turned off the main road and all at once the narrow lanes in the wetter, flatter country were white in the headlights.  Someone had driven down this road before me on this freezing morning and, like me, had no doubt driven with great care.  It was difficult to stand up on this icy surface, and the strange thing was that this ice seemed to be affecting only the roads,  the surrounding fields looked quite normal.

So I sat in the car, turned the headlights onto fill beam, and took this photo through the windscreen.  Dead, yellowing grasses on the sides of the road lead down to a road sign blazing white in the distance – the road turns abruptly to the left down there, and anyone speeding southwards down Kid Gate Road, especially at night, needs to know about that.

There is more about this bitterly cold visit to the Somerset Levels here.

There is another, very different, image illuminated by car headlights here.

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X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 84mm (equiv); 25,600 ISO; illuminated by daybreak and car headlights.
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SOMERSET LEVELS 279 – ALLERMOOR DROVE (MONO)

 

 

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Allermoor Drove arrows eastwards across Tealham Moor, on the Somerset Levels south Wedmore; 24 June 2016.

Not long ago, these flatlands were covered in lakes and impenetrable marshes, in which higher ground like that seen at top left formed islands.

When these flatlands were drained and converted to agriculture, a network of these (often dead straight) droves was laid down across the newly emergent landscape, so that farmers could access their fields without crossing other farmers’ land.  A few of these droves have been (slightly!) widened to become tarmac roads, but most remain as rough tracks like this, which are quite adequate for their purpose.

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

X-T1 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2.
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