ARCHIVE: LOOKING AT CARS 20

 

 

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The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles.  Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 . 

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day. 

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

Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the B&W Blue Filter profile; south Bristol; 12 Sept 2020.

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OUTER SUBURBS 283 – EARLY MORNING, APPROACHING THE MAIN ROAD

 

 

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Walking towards the main road, with streetlights, tail lights, tall trees and a bus shelter, and sunrise starting to colour the sky.

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day. 

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

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 10 Oct 2020.
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ARCHIVE: LOOKING AT CARS 18 – SUNRISE BEHIND PARKED VAN

 

 

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Walking into the sunrise, walking towards a van, walking home.  At first the glare from the sun was totally dazzling, I was in a world of blinding highlights and impenetrable silhouettes.  But as I moved into the van’s shadow, there appeared this view in through its dew-soaked windscreen.

The steering wheel is at lower left, and one of the black wiper blades at lower right.  The circular black spot attaches the faintly seen rear view mirror to the inside of the windscreen, and there are also the vague outlines of seats with headrests and the illuminated panes of its rear windows – through which the sun is shining onto the inside of the windscreen.

The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles.  Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 . 

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.  

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

Technique: TG-5 at 61mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Modern 01 profile; south Bristol; 9 Oct 2020.
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ARCHIVE: LOOKING AT CARS 17 – DARK CAR (MONO)

 

 

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An image of three parts.  The two cars, manufactured and highly mobile confections of metal, plastic, rubber and glass, racing away from each other on a road that is certainly not for those more sensitive souls who are forever slowing down to compose poetry or look at the wildflowers.

And then the white line in the road’s center, undulating slightly as it climbs towards the hill’s crest.

And finally the light, spotlighting the dark car as it rushes urgently towards us,  and seen more faintly through the trees on the right, and then more brightly (the light at the end of the tunnel?) on the left.

The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles.  Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 . 

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Architectural preset; fast road over the Mendip Hills, above Compton Martin, Somerset; 24 Nov 2017.
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ARCHIVE: LOOKING AT CARS 15 – WHITE CAR (MONO)

 

 

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White car with its boot open, Broad Street, central Bristol; 16 Aug 2013.

I guess that here I’m attempting something abstract and different, trying out an idea.  I was approaching this car through a covered alleyway, the open end of which framed it.

The car is stark – pure (i.e. completely blown) white highlight, pure black windows, and a very few more middling tones.  And, as a foil to its immaculate, streamlined lines, it has its open boot stuck up in the air at an acute angle.

And then, in this abstract composition, other, somewhat less pale, elements are set in the enveloping blackness.  Most notably, the pale column coming downwards from the top of the frame (where is cut by the dark lines of a grill) to intersect the car’s black back window.  Then there are the two white rectangles on the pavement below the car, and the less obtrusive white elements left and upper left of the car.

This is a simplification of reality and an attempt at graphic design.

The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles.  Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 . 

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

Technique:  G11 PowerShot at 140mm (35mm equiv); 400 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Silhouette preset.

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OUTER SUBURBS 279 – MORNING SUNLIGHT ON GRASS

 

 

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Standing on a lawn, beside a fence, as the sun rose.

Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.  

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

Technique: TG-5 at 46mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Modern 01 profile; south Bristol; 27 Aug 2020.
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ARCHIVE 565 – MEGALITH 5 (MONO)

 

 

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Amongst the prehistoric ritual stones at Stanton Drew, in the Chew Valley south of Bristol.

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

Technique: X-T1 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Tin Type preset; Stanton Drew, in the Chew Valley south of Bristol; 6 Nov 2017.

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ARCHIVE: LOOKING AT CARS 8 – DARK CAR (MONO + COLOUR)

 

 

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Car at traffic lights in central Bristol; 6 Apr 2013.

I’m drawn to this great, dark, looming presence – its waiting at the lights, growling deeply and looking like some squat and unstoppable, armoured assault weapon.  The sun was searing down but, for all the effect it was having on this baby, our star might as well have been tickling it with a feather duster.

The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles.  Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 .

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

Technique: G11 PowerShot at 140mm (35mm equiv); 100 ISO; conversion to mono and selective colour restoration in Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Yellowed 1 preset.

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ARCHIVE 563 – FOUR CHAIRS BELOW A TABLE (MONO)

 

 

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Browns restaurant, Queens Road, Bristol; 3 Feb 2017.

My day started early as they often do, and I got downtown at dawn and took a few photos.  But my heart wasn’t really in it because I know that yet another deep depression was steamrollering its way in from the Atlantic, and that it would be saturating Bristol with rain well before the morning was through.

And so to a stop in Browns up market (and certainly not down budget!) palace for Eggs Royale and a pot of very nice english tea.  I lounged there, looking around and feeling a bit out of things after the early start, and a table with four chairs that was catching the light from a window kept drawing my eye.

And so to opening my bag and getting out the camera, and looking through the viewfinder – but by then a couple had occupied the table next to the one I was looking at, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that they thought the camera was being pointed at them.  But at least this Fuji is not so large and intimidating, or so loud, as the Nikons, and I pressed quickly on and took two frames.

Technique: the table’s top was brightly lit and cluttered with many things, but I liked the look of the seats of the four chairs that were faintly glowing in the table’s shadow – and so to a composition in which the table’s bright and cluttered top is squeezed into the top fifth or so of the frame, while the seats of the chairs glow in the less brightly lit ‘underworld’ below.  There was a lot of contrast in the scene but the camera’s multi-zone metering (aided by the live histogram I’ve opted to have visible in the viewfinder) dealt with it well, and although the colour image is attractive – one of those instances where the near absence of colour really works – it really seemed to be a scene that would suit black and white, and so to SEP2.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 125mm (equiv); 12,800 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Full Dynamic Smooth preset and adding a tone.

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ARCHIVE KENYA 83 – THE EASTERN RIFT VALLEY AND THE MAU ESCARPMENT

 

 

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View westwards across the rift valley floor in Kenya, with the dark hills of the Mau Escarpment, the rift’s western wall, in the far distance; June 1978.

The eastern side of the African continent is breaking up and the Eastern Rift Valley, which runs through Kenya, is one of the vast fractures along which this fragmentation is occurring. 

The Mau Escarpment, seen in the distance, is the main part of the African continent, which stretches from there westwards right across to the Atlantic coast.

The terrain between the camera and those far away hills is the floor of the rift valley – a vast fracture in this ancient landmass –  and all of this land between the camera and that far range of hills has been created relatively recently by molten rock welling up from within the Earth to fill the fractures in the fragmenting continent – like blood filling and healing a cut in our skin.

When below ground, molten rock is known as magma.  Magma can be erupted out onto the Earth’s surface, when it is called lava – and lava is erupted through volcanoes.  There is an obvious volcano lower left in this scene, quite a small cone, and the undulating ground further away has many more.  The presence of hot springs and steam jets shows that there is still vast amounts of heat not far below the surface of the ground here – the volcanism here is not extinct, it is dormant and it might restart at any time.

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

Technique: OM-1 with 75-150 Zuiko lens at 150mm; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO.

UPDATE: love those blue hills receding off into the distance.  Wish I was still there, clutching a camera – though sadly realising that, to me at least, it might no longer be the same place that I left those 31 years ago.

THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES

I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago.  You can find more context here .  Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.

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