Looking at – and seeing – the world
March 16, 2019 8 Comments
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Selfie – my shadow against a metal fence – with the camera, as I remember it, held in my right hand.
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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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January 22, 2019 15 Comments
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Quite early on a morning in spring, and Jack’s Drove, the road north across the Tadham and Tealham Moors, on the Somerset Levels, is blocked; 10 Apr 2014.
The jet black area that cuts horizontally through my silhouette is the water-filled ditch that separates the rough pasture of the field at the top of the frame from the road on which I’m standing. These wet ditches do duty as fences hereabouts.
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Technique: D700 with 16-35 Nikkor lens at 16mm; 400 ISO; Silver Efex Pro2, starting at the Dramatic preset, and restoring the sign’s colour.
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October 12, 2018 8 Comments
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South Bristol at sunrise. Turning my back on the blinding glare, I saw my shadow and those of two trees thrown across autumn’s leaf-littered lawn.
The trees’ shadows were longer than mine and, after their stark darkness had raced away across the grass, it was deflected sharply upwards by the flat, brightly lit face of a wooden fence.
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 . Each will open in a separate window.
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Technique: TG-5 at 49mm (equiv); 500 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the High Contrast Harsh preset, and adding a strong Coffee tone; south Bristol; 9 Oct 2018.
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June 23, 2018 17 Comments
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I used to be an highly enthusiastic birder. School friends had awoken this interest in me in 1967, and 10 years later I left the UK for Kenya – to lecture on geology and to grab eyeful after eyefull of African birdlife. And not just African birdlife, but Afrotropical birdlife, the Afrotropical Region being Africa to the south of the Sahara, one of the great biological regions of the world, with many unique or highly distinctive flora and fauna.
And the plan – ah, the plans of mice and men! – was to stay in Kenya for two or three years, do a lot of birdwatching, and then move on elsewhere. Sure enough, I met up with other birders there, and went birding in many national parks and areas further off the beaten track. But then, in 1981, a chance remark informed me that there was a project in hand to map the distributions of Kenya’s 1,000+ bird species – and from that moment on there was for simply nothing else worth doing in Life.
In a nutshell, I worked on A Bird Atlas of Kenya for over eight years – it really was a vast amount of hard but very often enthralling work, funded by the World Wildlife Fund and many others, and relying on hundreds of volunteers – and the book was published in 1989. It was never going to be a best seller, it was not an identification guide (fieldguide), it was a fairly academic explanation of the distributions and seasonalities of Kenya’s (then) 1,065 bird species. My co-author was a zoology professor at Makerere University, in neighbouring Uganda.
And here I am, probably about 1983 or so, writing it. The photo is an indifferent scan of a small print but it conveys the overall idea, that I was awash in a sea of paper. For in the 1980s the developed world was developing IT technology apace, but here in the Third World it was a far rarer commodity, and especially so for those outside the world of business. We had no email and no computers. All correspondence was carried out by snail mail – and air letters, thousands of them, were the preferred thing because, since they could not contain anything, they were less prone to theft. We did enquire re the cost of producing the book by word processing but, in those days, in Kenya, it was completely prohibitive. In the end, an absolutely wonderful typist produced the whole thing, 600+ pages, on an electric golfball typewriter, ready to be photographed by our Dutch publishers.
So, here is the leafy Spring Valley suburb of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, around a mile or so above sea level. The equatorial sun is beating down, the large window beside me is open to admit fresh, warm air, and the great mass of greenery seen vaguely through the window are the tops of banana trees. Also, local roads were some distance away, and there was nothing but the sounds of birds, the rustling, swaying trees and the breeze – what better place to write a book? And although I do seem to be awash in a sea of paper, there was a very simple design to it all – all the most useful texts, maps and notes were arranged in a circle around me, all within instant, easy reach – it was a simple design that worked very well.
And as well as being enthralling, the bird atlas project had its exciting moments too. Flights in small aircraft to record the birds of very poorly known areas of the country were exciting, yes, they held a real sense of exploration. But my co-author was working in Uganda at just the time when the dictator Idi Amin was being ousted from Uganda by the present president, Yoweri Museveni. As the fighting moved up towards Kampala, Uganda’s capital, I strongly urged my co-author to flee – and I can recall his comment that it was only “a bit of bush warfare”, and that there was nothing to worry about. But, the fighting swept on through Kampala, he spent a long time on his floor of his house, sheltering from small arms fire, and a soldier was killed in his garden. How writing a book on birds stacks up against all that (and other) violence, I have always been unsure.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it yet again – recommended.
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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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March 14, 2018 8 Comments
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Selfie, reflected in a window.
LOL!!! >>> if you really feel that you need to enlarge this, you can click onto it to open another version in a separate window, and then click onto that version to enlarge it.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; Lightroom; central Bristol; 9 Sept 2016.
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February 23, 2018 21 Comments
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February 14, 2018 22 Comments
Mannequin, seared by sunlight in a Cornish shop window
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The simple fact is, I very much enjoy blogging as a means of self-expression. There’s the creation of the images, all of the attendant writing too (I love writing!) – and last but certainly not least the communication with like minds around the world – I enjoy talking with you all very much! Also, there is not the slightest doubt that these years of blogging have been inspirational for me, certainly (to my eyes at least) improving my photography.
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A dear, warm creature, a being whom it is simply a pleasure to be with
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However, I have two large projects in hand, and I need to spend less time blogging for a month or two, to complete them. One of these projects is the creation of my (more or less) annual Blurb photobook which, amongst other things, contains my favourite photos from the preceding 12 months along with their captions and text. I have around 20 of these books now, some the annual volumes and some other, specific projects, and I find them a very convenient way of producing hard copies of my favourite work; they are very good to look back through.
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Someone special, from long ago and far away
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So, whereas I’ve been producing around six posts a week, this will decrease for awhile – assuming that is that I can restrain my creative enthusiasm! And for today, here are some favourite images – faces from the archives – two people, someone quite artificial, and two beautiful animals. Clicking onto these images will enlarge them, click onto them again to further enlarge them.
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Great Grey Owl – we looked at each other
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Selfie, with trademark cap and hulking Nikon DSLR
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January 27, 2018 13 Comments
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January 7, 2018 12 Comments
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Selfie with butcher’s shop
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