BRISTOL 123 – STEPS OFF BALDWIN STREET (MONO)

 

 

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Steps from Baldwin Street up towards St Nicholas Street.

And the effects of tilting a very wide lens slightly upwards – yes there’s a wide field of view, but see how the metal post at upper right is tilting drunkenly outwards, while less obviously the same is true of the wall at upper left.  Purists can probably correct such effects with software but I imagine this would reduce the overall area of view, and I’m happy to go with the effect as it is.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Film Noir 2 preset; Bristol; 4 Aug 2017.
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STILL LIFE 138 – GLASS OF BEER 2

 

 

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Amber nectar?  No, not really, its only Stella Artois – but its in our faces and bubbling, and I like the effect.

The first glass of beer image is here.  Thinking about it, it may even be the same glass of beer (depending on how fast I was drinking at the time), but I think I prefer this closer in, simpler version, with its more clearly seen bubbles.

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

Technique: Canon G11 PowerShot at 140mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Standard film simulation, Bristol; 10 Feb 2017.
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ARCHIVE 307 – HAZEL, A (FOR ONCE!) PLANNED IMAGE

 

 

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Hazel leaves, in our back garden; 25 June 2013.

This was captured with a definite visual plan – the eye enters the frame from the left, very soon hits the brightest component, and then moves rightwards and upwards along the “tail” of darker objects leading to the upper right corner of the frame.  The eye might then exit the frame in the upper right corner: having the final element of the “tail” there might stop it, or it might have been better to have this corner dark.

I never cease to marvel at the beauty of Nature.  What am I looking at here, what is my camera recording?  Well, light that has travelled 93 million miles from Our Star, to partially shine through a small component of one of Earth’s myriad lifeforms.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 250 ISO.

UPDATE: I rather casually mention here that viewers’ eyes will be entering the image from the left – you can find more on this very real phenomenon here.

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PEOPLE 283 – GOING TO WORK 27

 

 

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Because of its format, this image is probably best viewed enlarged – click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window.

Bright sunlight.  Driving seat or cockpit.  Morning commuter or fighter pilot.  Whichever, still stationary in Bristol’s traffic.

This image is very different from the previous Going To Work post, the journey to work encompasses many different environments and emotions.  For photography, I think I prefer the mornings of winter – and now its just a question of whether I’ll have the resolve to get out early again into those cold darknesses.  I’m also having vague but recurring thoughts about using a waterproof camera downtown in dark and torrential downpours but, as I’m usually a dry weather photographer, whether that will materialise is an even greater uncertainty!  Still, you know, mad dogs and Englishmen …

But the cleanly shaven jaw of this man brings something else to mind.  As I grow older, I’m looking more and more at the things we humans routinely think and  do, at the things we take for granted, at our prejudices, stigmas and taboos,  and I just end up shaking my head wonderingly – its probably an old man thing!  But to me, shaving the hair off my face in the certain knowledge that I’m going to have to do it again tomorrow, and the next day and all the days after that, is simply not sensible.  And this is not a recent trait either.  For my father’s gift to me, in his genes, had me starting to lose my hair and having to shave at around the age of 16 or so.  Precocious or what?  The early hair loss was a little traumatic, though its quite meaningless and out of mind now.  But (wet) shaving before going to school was just not my cup of meat, I simply couldn’t see the point, and so the day I left school at the age of 18 I started on a beard – and I’ve had that beard ever since.  The previous two posts to this (25 and 26) feature the early morning bus into work, which for me was always a downer, but although the driver featured here has more luxurious transport, I’m not sure that I don’t rate the having to be clean shaven and neat for work thing as being on a par with – as being right down there alongside – the early morning bus.  Bohemianism?  Probably.  In fact, yes, hopefully.

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  and 26.  Each will open in a separate window.

Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Bristol Bridge, in the city centre; 19 July 2016.
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PEOPLE 282 – GOING TO WORK 26 (MONO)

 

 

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She’s in the rush to work, in a winter’s dawn.  Gazing out impassively, from light into darkness, a latter day Mona Lisa in a frame within a frame.

And the D700 is working flat out, wide open at 25,600 ISO – grain, shadow, contrast, darkness –  and yet more grain.

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 and 25.  Each will open in a separate window.

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

Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 25,600 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Film Noir 1 preset; Temple Gate, central Bristol; 23 Dec 2016.
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ARCHIVE 302 – BOOKLET ON WHITE TABLE, BESIDE GREEN SEATING

 

 

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View through the sunlit window of a restaurant in Park Street, Bristol; 6 Apr 2013.

The gloriously blasting sunlight is striking the white side of the table and the green seats around the table.  The top of the table is in shadow but, being white, is not quite as dark as I’ve rendered it – to me the pure white rectangle made by the table’s edge is very strong graphically.  And I wanted the booklet to be almost floating in the blackness.

There is also the unfocused shadow of a plant – looking like some large predatory insect, a mantis perhaps –  which is off left of the table.

Technique: Canon G11 PowerShot at 140mm (35mm equivalent); 200 ISO.

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STILL LIFE 130 – QUEEN CHARLOTTE STREET (MONO)

 

 

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Morning sunlight across a rough façade.  I’m down an alleyway in the city centre and the décor is, shall we say, functional.  Lots of rough texture, no need for the expense of glamorous, smooth surfaces here.  And off the main road a little, out of view a bit, so plain bars to deter those who, seized by an excess of entrepreneurial zeal, might not want to enter through the front door.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 145mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Architectural preset; Queen Charlotte Street, central Bristol; 8 July 2017.
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BRISTOL 122 – CITY CENTRE GREEN SPACE

 

 

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Somewhat ravaged Dandelion catching the morning light in perfunctory flower bed outside a shopping mall.

Of course we’re a Green city!  Actually I’m doing Bristol a disservice as it does have some nice green bits, and anyone really wanting to see flowers is not in any case going to go looking for them in shopping mall flower beds, are they?!

And some of you may point out that Dandelions are in any case weeds – but, although not being any great Green/botanical activist, weed is a term that I simply do not subscribe to.  The fact that something is growing where we have decreed that it is not allowed cannot in any way lessen that something’s status as a living organism.  Plants are plants are plants, period.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 250mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; The Galleries shopping mall, central Bristol; 7 July 2017.

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STILL LIFE 124 – MORNING SUNLIGHT

 

 

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Slivers of morning sunlight on a city centre façade.

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 113mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Narrow Lewins Mead, Bristol; 26 May 2017.
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ARCHIVE 296 – TIMBER (MONO)

 

 

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Stack of mangrove poles; Lamu, coastal Kenya; July 1978.

The (Western) human eye scans images from left to right, and from top to bottom. Here, my eye enters the image from the left, and then travels right along the parallel poles, until arrested by the vertical pole and its binding, at the far end – positioning the vertical pole on the right of the picture does not work so well.

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

Technique: OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide rated at 64 ISO; Silver Efex Pro.
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