PEOPLE 280 – CITY LIFE

 

 

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City life – faces, images, media, messages, noise; hurrying, multitasking, crowding in close, claustrophobically close; all around.

There are two little bits of the Natural World in this photo.  She is at lower right and hurrying to get through it all, and the sky is at upper right, calm, serene, and tainted only by our fumes and emissions.  And the rest is, well, the rest.

Photographically, I enjoy the city, I love being there with a camera, this human environment has so much of interest to the lens.  But in other terms, to me, the ability to access peace and quiet is one of the most valuable things on this planet.

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 10-24 Fujinon lens at 30mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Temple Gate, central Bristol; 28 Apr 2017.
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PEOPLE 278 – GOING TO WORK 24

 

 

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A poppy for Remembrance – this being the eleventh day of the eleventh month – and a hot drink to ease the start of work on a Friday morning: people walking to work over Bristol Bridge, appearing closely bunched together due to the effect of the telephoto lens.

Poppies for Remembrance,  reflecting the hordes of these red flowers that grew so well on the soils of the battlefields of the First World War, the soils that has been so churned up by artillery shells and the digging of fortifications.    This was the “War To End All Wars”, but of course it was not that at all – and these Bristol workers are within sight of the shell of a church burnt out by incendiaries (which is now preserved as a monument), and another still scarred by shrapnel, from bombing during the 1939-45 conflict.

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  and 23 .  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); 400 ISO; Lightroom; Color Efex Pro 4; Bristol Bridge, central Bristol; 11 Nov 2017.
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PEOPLE 277 – GOING TO WORK 23

 

 

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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.
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PEOPLE 276 – WOMAN WALKING

 

 

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Bond Street: shadows, sunlight and someone, on a morning pavement.

She was always going to be anonymous – just her feet and shadow – but rotating the shot may have absorbed her still more into the overall abstract.

There is a rather different image of a man walking, here.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 153mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; spotmetering; Lightroom, adding 90 degrees clockwise rotation and using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; central Bristol; 26 May 2017.
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PEOPLE 270 – NELSON STREET 1

 

 

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Walking in the city, creating images and surrounded by more, always more.  The insistent faces of advertising and the media, the faces of ordinary people – the clash of the idealised with the real.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Nelson Street, central Bristol; 19 May 2017.
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STILL LIFE 108 – SHOP SELLING BRIDAL WEAR

 

 

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Elegant, graceful bling: it comes at a price mind, but then its for the day when no expense is spared and perfection is the sole (no pun intended!), simply must-have outcome.

There is another Queens Road dress here.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 276mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Queens Road, central Bristol; 7 Apr 2017.
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PEOPLE 264 – WATCHING A FATman (NOTE MULTITASKING ON LEFT) (MONO)

 

 

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Couple outside Woodes very pleasant (and down-to-earth and real) café on Bristol’s Park Street >>> watching a FATman!  I was surprised they noticed me, because I was photographing Woodes’s frontage as a whole and was quite far off.  Even with my habitual 305mm telephoto and its x6 magnification, they only take up about 10% of the frame – that this picture is at all usable is a tribute to both to the quality of the lens and (at 1/105) its stabilisation, and the X-T2’s 24MP too.

Maybe on a mundane morning they were intrigued by a distant, overweight man, who has seen better days and who was artfully dressed in a dirty old coat and the odd sort of hat that the oily drivers of grimy steam locomotives might favour … but then Bristol can be like that, thankfully.  Meaning a counterculture?  Yes, that’s right, but I never mind queuing for my food.

Click onto this image to open a larger version in a separate window – which starts to give an idea of just what a magnification this is.

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, including the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Full Dynamic Smooth preset and adding a light coffee (how appropriate!) tone; 21 Apr 2017.
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PEOPLE 262 – WOMAN WITH BLUE NAILS

 

 

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As so often happens, a grab shot – time for only one, very quick shot –  as passing traffic momentarily slowed down.  Luckily I had the camera set to spot metering linked to the active autofocus point, something I’m using quite a lot at the moment.  And the telephoto zoom was fully extended.  I just raised the camera to my eye, it found focus on her hand almost instantaneously, and I fired.

What do I think about this image?  Well, a passing soul, a passing someone, a stranger to me as I am to her, someone going somewhere.  But now, I suppose, part of a design, resting her fingers upon – or is she helping support?! – a curving metallic blueness set in a photographically enhanced darkness.  And if I could produce more such images, of beings in artificial, abstract realities, I would.

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

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, including the Classic Chrome film simulation; Park Street, central Bristol; 7 Apr 2017.
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ARCHIVE 289 – LUO FAMILY

 

 

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Luo family on a farm near Akala, in the far west of Kenya; April 1979.

The backdrop is the painted wall of a wattle and daub hut, the smooth surface layer of which is starting to flake off on the far right.  Minor points, maybe that I’ve only really appreciated now, after all these years, are the Vicks poster and the kitten.

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

OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko; Agfa CT18 colour slide, rated at 64 ISO.

UPDATE: The people in Kenya were in the main very friendly and hospitable.  I very much enjoyed my years in that country.  Again – once again – I wish that I had photographed more of the people that I met there.

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PEOPLE 261 – GOING TO WORK 21

 

 

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Woman driver, an anonymous someone in the morning rush hour – a picture to look deeply into, almost abstract, a traveller cocooned in a cacophony of reflection.

Again a grab shot, the traffic surged forward, momentarily paused, and there was just time for a single, frantic shot before the great metal torrent streamed off again on its way into the city.

This is a restricted crop from the very centre of the image, but the X-T2’s 24 megapixels in the less than full-frame sized APS-C sensor certainly helps when using such small parts of the capture.

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 and 20.  Each will open in a separate window.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click on the enlarged image once more to further enlarge it.

Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujifilm lens at 276mm (equiv); 12,800 ISO; Lightroom; Temple Gate, Bristol; 24 Feb 2017.

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