Looking at – and seeing – the world
January 18, 2018 13 Comments
.
Shooting into the mist and light on Tadham Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 10 Apr 2014.
There is another recently posted image from this sequence, and more context, here .
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 220mm; 200 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.
.
.
.
January 12, 2018 19 Comments
.
Low angle sunlight shining through mist on Tadham Moor, south of Wedmore, on the Somerset Levels; 10 Apr 2014.
Driving westwards across Tadham Moor with the sun rising behind me, I started encountering low banks of mist which were decidedly mobile, appearing and disappearing with disconcerting rapidity. I was heading for the Magic Carpark but suddenly became aware that the mist ahead was fast disappearing, and so I swerved into a field entrance, leapt out of the car and looked back behind me, into the glare – and started firing.
As usual, there was a short length of fencing beside the gate to the field, which extended down from the gate to the water-filled ditch that otherwise forms the field’s boundary. So I placed this in the foreground as a silhouette for depth, focused on it with a large aperture – and let the misty landscape behind it look after itself. This backdrop consists of the rough, rather greyish pasture of the field, behind which are a few thin bushes and shrubs along the field’s edge – these are standing above another wet ditch which is the field’s far boundary.
Beyond this boundary, the next field holds greener grass and, in the distance, the faint silhouettes of larger trees can just be seen.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.
.
.
.
December 29, 2017 4 Comments
.
Low angle autumn sunlight grazes the surface of the pavement on a steep hill.
The leaf is from one of the tall Plane trees that line this major route south out of the city.
Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it.
Technique: TG-5 at 74mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Natural film simulation; Wells Road, Bristol; 17 Nov 2017.
.
.
.
December 14, 2017 4 Comments
.
After a morning looking for low angle winter sunlight in the city, I walked back towards some (more!) food and a bus home. I was walking beside a roaringly busy dual carriageway and the dazzling winter sun – providing at best only the very faintest warmth – was blasting across the road at me from the left. Looking into the sun, across the road, I turned the X-T2 into portrait orientation and took this picture – which has here been rotated 90 degrees towards the left – anticlockwise – into landscape format.
What was the camera looking at? The dual carriageway has a central crash barrier, with a stout metal girder above a solid concrete base. On the left of the shot, this crash barrier throws a harsh black shadow onto the road’s surface. Then, to the right of that, there is the black tarmac road surface, turned almost silver by the sun’s glare. And then the thick white line that separates the road’s two inbound lanes.
The lane nearest the camera has a brown surface, to show that it leads to an exit from the dual carriageway. Autumn leaves have been firmly crushed into this brown surface – in a way that they would not be crushed into real tarmac – until they have become pale and flattened, amorphous streaks of their former selves. And so to an abstract image.
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 305mm; 640 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise; Temple Way, central Bristol; 1 Dec 2017.
.
.
.
September 10, 2017 11 Comments
.
Meadow with wildflowers beside North Chine Drove, southeast of Wedmore, on the Somerset Levels; 27 Jul 2011.
The uncut grass with its abundance of tall yellow wildflowers first caught my eye and, and I was looking at how it might best be photographed when the sun broke through the clouds, producing this beautiful (and very lucky) shaft of light across the scene.
The photo is in three layers. In the foreground there are more of the yellow flowers, but in the shade and unfocused. Above this, the shaft of sunlight cuts across the shot, illuminating both the tall grasses and another grove of the wildflowers. Finally, the third and upper layer contains the trees and bushes behind the field which (luckily again) are partly caught by the sun’s rays, so that this background is not wholly dark.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor at 300mm; 400 ISO; converted to monochrome, and slightly tinted very pale yellow, with Silver Efex Pro.
.
.
.
August 1, 2017 10 Comments
.
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.
.
.
.
July 23, 2017 2 Comments
.
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.
.
.
.
July 21, 2017 10 Comments
.
Early morning sunlight in our back garden; 9 Jul 2013.
Looking down the garden through a thin screen of tall grasses. A very shallow depth of field, produced by using a long telephoto at close quarters, has thrown nearly everything except the closest grasses far out of focus. This is not an accurate representation of the scene, but rather an impression of how it looked.
The line of dark tones at the top of the frame are the shadows below the hedge at the bottom of the garden.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 200 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.
.
.
.
June 22, 2017 5 Comments
.
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.
.
.
.
June 10, 2017 10 Comments
.
Red light in the rush hour: queuing traffic, frustration, cold winter sunshine.
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 and 22. 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 yet again.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); Lightroom; Bristol Bridge, central Bristol; 11 Nov 2016.
.
.
.
