BRISTOL 151 – TABLE AND YELLOW CHAIR

 

 

.

A couple of years back, I was doing a lot of early morning visits to Bristol city centre, and glorying in the abilities, light weight and compactness of my second mirrorless camera, the Fujifilm X-T2 (my first being the X-T1).  Having tramped the early streets for several hours, I would at last fetch at some or other eatery, and flop down to a second breakfast – which was usually a Full English.

One of the eateries I frequented was Browns: the food is excellent and, while not inexpensive, the Full English with a pot of tea (together with a tea strainer!) has a definite sense of occasion and ceremony about it – which I’ve tried to convey in A Distinctly Civilised Full English, here .  Even though I say so myself, if you’re anything like interested in food, this post might be worth a look.

And while waiting for the food to arrive, I took many pictures of the restaurant’s tables and beautiful yellow chairs, which were side lit by large windows looking out onto the street.  Some of these images have already been posted – search for Browns in the tags shown along the bottom of this post – but here is another that I came across recently.  Mostly low key, its about the way the light coming in from the street illuminates the various objects in the frame, notably the yellow chair.  I hope you like it.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 212mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Provia/Standard profile; Browns restaurant, Bristol; 24 Feb 2017.
.
.
.

BRISTOL 150 – PARKED CAR 4: STRIP OF REFLECTED LIGHT ON A CAR DOOR (MONO)

 

 

.

Early morning, low angle sunshine beside the railway station, and the door of a parked car is hit by a stray beam of bright reflected light.

A Minimalist image, presented in black and white to make it more so.  There’s really very little to see here – just the door handle and the narrow gap between the door and the rest of the car’s bodywork, both rendered in sharp focus; and, at bottom left, the lower edge of the door and the shadowed road below it.  And, finally, the bright band of reflected light, presumably coming from a nearby sunlit window pane.

This is the camera catching and preserving a tiny part of a much larger scene during a brief moment in time.  In itself, the scene is insignificant but, as always, it is good to see it, it is good to look at our surroundings, rather than just casually glancing over them while thinking of other – possibly equally trivial – things.  It is always good to engage with Reality, even mundane Reality, in this way >>> and the more so if you have an interest in the visual world.

There are earlier images in this Parked Car series here: 1 2 3 .

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 300mm; 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Graphite profile; flipped; beside Temple Meads railway station, in central Bristol; 10 May 2019.
.
.
.

SOMERSET LEVELS 386 – EARLY MORNING 2 (MONO)

 

 

.

A bed of Stinging Nettles – at once soft, attractive and menacing – reaches out towards the camera.  Further back, a stump raises its one bare branch in a celebration of Life continuing.

Other images in this Early Morning series are here: 1 .

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

Technique: X-T2 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Velvia/Vivid profile; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Film Noir 1 preset and adding a moderate Coffee tone; Hurn Drove, Ash Moor, on the Somerset Levels southwest of Wells; 2 Aug 2019.
.
.
.

SOMERSET LEVELS 384 – LOOKING PAST GRASSES, TOWARDS TREES

 

 

.

This picture is best viewed enlarged: click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.

Looking at the grove of trees on Common Moor – there is more context here: 1 .  Sitting relatively low down in the car, I was able to look through these grasses towards the grove of trees.  The fine, pale, elongated specks in the image, best seen when it is enlarged, are falling raindrops – the shutter speed was 1/320th second.

Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 6400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Standard v2 profile; Chasey’s Drove, on Common Moor north of Glastonbury, on the Somerset Levels; 19 July 2019.
.
.
.

SOMERSET LEVELS 383 – GROVE OF TREES (MONO)

 

 

.

A wet, grey morning, and driving slowly westwards along the dead straight – and deserted – Chasey’s Drove, on Common Moor north of Glastonbury.  I’d been exploring here before, and attracted by the look of groves of low trees beside the road – and so to a more leisurely look.  Rain emptied from the overcast, but the direction of the slight breeze meant that I could open the driver’s window beside me and still remain more or less dry.  And so to looking out of my car’s window into this grove of low trees and taking pictures.

Technique: I’ve talked before ( here ) about utilising the ability of modern cameras to internally process Raw files in various ways to produce jpegs.  With the tree images from this wet morning, I found that the Camera Graphite (CG) picture control of the Z 6 produced promising results in-camera, and that Lightroom (LR) has a CG profile that mimics that of the camera.  And so to using LR’s CG profile as a first step in the processing, followed up by further processing in LR.

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

Technique: Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 6400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Graphite profile; Chasey’s Drove, on Common Moor north of Glastonbury, on the Somerset Levels; 19 July 2019.
.
.
.

BRISTOL 148 – LITTLE KING STREET

 

 

.
Morning sunlight casting shadows across a façade.

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 at 300mm; 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid v2 profile; Little King Street, in Bristol city centre; 10 May 2019.
.
.
.

OUTER SUBURBS 122 – PARKED CAR 2 (MONO)

 

 

.

Parked car with pavement, kerb and puddle.

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 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 53a 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 .  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 25mm (equiv); 500 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Monotone profile; south Bristol; 7 Feb 2019.
.
.
.

ARCHIVE 414 – THE COLOUR OF THE SEA BENEATH A SMALL BOAT

 

 

.

A small, blue boat rides at anchor – a very simple image, that’s really all there is to see.

The only solid facts are the simple, elegantly curving lines of the boat.  Beyond them, the sea’s surface takes on a silvery hue where the light catches it. But in the craft’s brief shadow, this paleness disintegrates and fragments as, approaching closer to the graceful blues of that wooden hull, the emerald greens of the sea deepen and, gently but firmly, draw us further in and deeper down.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO;  St Ives, Cornwall; 21 Sept 2016.

.

.

.

SOMERSET LEVELS 371 – LOOKING INTO THE DISTANCE

 

 

.
The view into the distance, into another world perhaps.  I say this because, years ago, when I was braver, more reckless and probably more romantic than I am now, I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in very wild places, in Arabia and in Kenya, and to some extent high up in the Western Alps too.  And I remember being totally drawn and excited by the dim twinkling of far off lights seen through the blues of dawn and dusk – both from the ground and from aircraft.  I felt I was looking into another world, seeing something almost magical, with feelings both of excitement and awe.

But of course, in walking, motoring or flying to those twinkling lights, reality reasserted itself, the magical became mundane – and it was only when I looked back behind me, back towards where I had been, that I could see the magic once more … ha! >>> such is life >>> such is the reality of things!

But, even now, all these years later, and when I can infuse enough blood into my alcohol stream, looking deeply into far off blues – the vast calm indigos of John Fowles – still gets to me.  A little bit of the magic is still there, and I am most grateful for that.

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 300mm; 400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Landscape v2 profile; looking east from Queen’s Sedge Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 5 July 2019.
.
.
.

SOMERSET LEVELS 369 – WESTHAY MOOR

 

 

.
Two takes on an impressive lifeform – one mono, the other colour –  from the northern edge of Westhay Moor, just south of the hamlet of Mudgley, on the Somerset Levels.

Click onto either image (especially the top one) to open as larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.

My favourite?  I like them both – two different takes on the same subject.  Have you a preference?

.

.
Technique (upper photo): Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 145mm; 1600 ISO; jpeg generated in-camera, using the Monochrome picture control with a green filter; minor additional processing in Lightroom; Westhay Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 5 July 2019.

Technique (lower photo): Z 6 with 70-300 Nikkor lens used in DX (= APS-C) format to give 390mm; 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Neutral v2 profile.
.
.
.