Looking at – and seeing – the world
August 2, 2020 2 Comments
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Motorbike in St Ives, Cornwall; 24 Apr 2012.
Despite having ridden one (badly) in my misspent youth, I am not any sort of motorbike fan or petrolhead, but these details caught my eye as we headed down through St Ives towards the harbour.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 170mm; 400 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2.
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June 13, 2020 6 Comments
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Herring Gull: winter plumaged adult at St Ives, Cornwall; 27 Sept 2012.
This individual is sitting on a wall, but I want to show nothing but the bird and its overcast backdrop and so have cropped the wall out. Mono simplifies the picture, and gives the impression of a tough and rugged individual used to enduring the dull, overcast, wintery conditions.
These birds have pure white heads in summer, but this one has the streaked head and neck that appears later in the year.
I like the detail in the feathering at lower left, especially the single feather sticking up from the rest.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – highly recommended.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 800 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2, starting from the Antique Plate 1 preset.
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April 14, 2020 12 Comments
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Mooring lines on the beach in St Ives harbour, Cornwall; 27 Apr 2006.
This picture was taken looking down onto the beach from West Pier. It might look good in mono, but I think that the subtle colours of the sand and the seawater add something to this Minimalist shot.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: Leica Minilux; Fuji Provia 400 colour slide; rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
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April 1, 2020 7 Comments
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Grey Seal off the end of Smeatons Pier, St Ives, Cornwall; 21 Sept 2016.
We’ve just spent a few days in Hayle, down near the southwestern tip of Cornwall – and the English weather, always an uncertainty, has been good to us. When in this part of the world, a visit to beautiful St Ives is always a treat, and especially so on a bright sunny day with the tide in – the colours and light are simply out of this world – maybe because St Ives is surrounded on two or three sides by the bright sea.
Good things about this image? Well, it was the first time my wife had seen this creature in the wild, which was a huge plus. We’ve never seen seals there before, and the newly erected warnings about feeding them may mean that, like gulls, crows, Foxes and many others, these denizens of wild coasts have also developed a liking for Man’s tasty titbits. Certainly an incoming fishing boat threw him some welcome morsels, which were hastily gobbled up – but maybe a Cornish pasty might send him sinking down to the bottom!
And also, just look at the colour of that seawater – for someone brought up along the muddy shores of the Bristol Channel, these clear, emerald waters are beautiful beyond belief.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO.
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March 8, 2020 11 Comments
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Gull yawning; St Ives, Cornwall; 20 Oct 2016.
This is most probably a Herring Gull. The brown speckling on its plumage shows it to be a young bird, probably now just about to enter its first winter – it hatched from its egg this summer.
It was perched on the wall of the West Pier at St Ives, “loafing” as birdwatchers say. Which means that it had had some food, that it wasn’t desperately hungry, so that it was just hanging around – while still no doubt keeping an eye out for any chance meal that might present itself.
I leant against the wall and, very gradually, inched my way towards it, keeping silent, compact and low. It shuffled a little, it wasn’t quite sure about me (sensible bird!), but then it relaxed, and I started gradually capturing images. I could have wished that the D800’s shutter was quieter but, on the plus side, its reliable autofocus did its usual excellent job, and I was able to concentrate on the images, rather than on whether they were sharp or not.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO.
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March 1, 2020 11 Comments
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A couple strolling over the rocks at St Ives, Cornwall; 27 Sept 2012.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor at 300mm; 400 ISO; this picture was produced by dragging the midpoint tab on Levels & Curves quite radically to the right, which has had the effect of darkening the image’s darker tones – in fact it has reduced them to black. The paler tones are relatively unaffected – and I’ve given them a lot of warmth in Capture NX2, to boost their colours.
Reality? Definitely not! But do I like it? Yes!
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July 30, 2019 6 Comments
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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.
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March 24, 2019 11 Comments
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Turnstone in winter plumage, on the West Pier at St Ives, Cornwall; 21 Sept 2016.
The Turnstone is a small wader (aka shorebird) that derives its name from its habit of turning over stones on beaches in the hope of finding things to eat underneath.
Its usually a bird seen at a distance, small and brown on the foreshore. But at St Ives in Cornwall, especially when the tide is up, small groups dart about on this seaside resort’s promenade, often literally around the feet of holidaymakers.
And so, being on holiday and carefree(!), I bought a pasty as a second breakfast and sat on a seat munching the golden beast and staring out to sea, when several of these little birds swarmed around my feet. Well, I can take a hint, and as small pasty morsels were scattered around, these little creatures went into super-speed mode and downed the lot in an instant – for an ex-birder like me, almost a surreal moment!
Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO.
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January 17, 2019 4 Comments
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A couple having a hot drink beside the beach in the harbour at St Ives, Cornwall; 10 Oct 2013.
The man is hunched over towards the right, sipping his cuppa, while the woman is inclined towards the left, intent on screwing shut her bottle of milk. Their two shapes tend to come together somewhat, in the shape of an arch or dome, an effect heightened by her inclined hair bun. I’ve tried to enhance this impression of togetherness by adding a slight, pale, circular vignette.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s Full Dynamic Smooth preset; mild copper toning.
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November 29, 2018 2 Comments
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Juvenile Herring Gull in the harbour at St Ives, Cornwall; 27 Sept 2012.
I have a liking for photos that appear more like the products of other media and here is something certainly heading that way – perhaps more like a pencil drawing? I’ve used a Soft Portrait preset, which includes pale vignetting, and the bird appears to be emerging from dense mist, with even its left wing nebulous and obscure.
Using this preset has also almost completely obscured details of the sea below the bird – and this all makes for an artificially isolated vignette of the creature – a sketch in a notebook perhaps.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 800 ISO; conversion to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Soft Classic Portrait preset, and giving the image the look of Ilford Delta 400 mono print film.
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