Colourful Night

This was the very last frame I took before leaving Sunderland after the conference at the university in November, 2011. I was almost back to my boarding house just off the Roker seafront, and took this shot from the street corner. As I recall, I had the camera balanced, held rigidly against something, probably a post cross the road. This was the best of the set. Fog had rolled in and I got many interesting studies as I walked back from the last social with colleagues from the event, but all suffered from softness and camera shake to one degree or another, as light registration speed was just not there in those days. Oddly enough, I still use the same camera all these years later—it’s reliable and keeps on going! The colour always engages me with these shots—the late evening blue sky scattering through the fog, the burn-in of the street lights, all very atmospheric. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Dark Land, Dark Sky

 

There’s no way to really describe some places, you have to be there and experience them. This is Whitby, in Yorkshire, one of my favourite spots, photographed in November, 2011. I was on the east cliff, up by the church and old abbey, and the weather was doing some interesting things—great banks of cloud coming over from the west, so the late afternoon sunlight shafted through, making ‘Godrays’ as they call them. But the way the chip handled the conditions created this set of images, almost gone away to black and white, and the relationship between the sharp, in-focus areas and the general murk is amazing. No wonder Stoker set Dracula in this beautiful, creepy, Gothic place! The view across the River Esk toward the moors is amazing on the clearest days; in weather like this it’s downright haunted. One might say this is a flawed picture because of the contrast and lack of definition, but it’s an honest reproduction of what was there on the day, and it stirs the soul to look into such a moment. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and gamma values; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Where the Sky Goes on Forever

Second posting in quick succession—making up for the dead fortnight. I was busy with writing!

Continuing my theme of blue Aussie skies, here’s one from the village of Milang, by the shores of Lake Alexandrina, taken on April 21^st, 2020. The land down there at the coast facing the Southern Ocean is very flat for the most-part, low-lying, and a land with low relief highlights the sky. “Big Sly Country,” I call it, and part of its charm is the Southern Ocean weatherscapes that dominate. Here, long-reaped fields lie parched, awaiting the return of the rains, and clouds sail in that relentless blue. Australia can be a very hard land at times, and when summer lingers it’s not the balmy Indian summer of northern latitudes, it’s the grinding thirst of a land which cannot live again until it’s blessed with water. Nothing clever in the photography, just a careful framing to exclude fences, bins, sign posts by the road... (It was rush-hour, meaning you could lie in the middle of the road to get shots if you wanted to, given the pace of life down there.) Contrast and colour were tweaked Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Burning Blue

That’s Australia—a sky so blue you’d almost not believe it could be real, over a land so parched you grieve for life here. This is a coastal hilltop above the road south, turning inland past the HMAS Hobart memorial. The Hobart was a destroyer which served off Vietnam, and was sunk on November 5^th, 2005, to create an artificial reef in Yankalilla Bay, South Australia. A picnic spot looks out to sea above the beach, with information displays about the ship. I took this frame on New Year’s Eve, 2019, a date at which Australia is well into its hot/dry, though nowhere near halfway there, despite having passed midsummer’s day. I remember the contrast of the fleecy clouds against that hypnotic blue capturing my attention. And this frame excludes road, trees, anything man-made, leaving just the sky and the summit, to declutter the composition and place all emphasis on nature. A somple point and shoot,l but the subject matter makes it interesting, as if you could fall into that sky and keep on going... Minor tweaks in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Cool in the Valley

Even at high summer, there are places the water continues to flow and the trees remain green. This is the Sturt River flowing through the bottom of Coromandel Valley, South Australia. This shot is dated 21^st of January, 2020—deep in the hot weather. But under the trees, life blooms—the river is filled with life, and the long trail beside the water is a popular walking route. It feels a long way from civilization but the main road is about fifty metres away. This is just a snap shot, taken from a bridge, but the variety of vegetal greens, the reflections on the river, the contrast, all make the image an interesting and well-featured composition. Minor adjustment to colour and contrast only. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Silver Sea

Sometimes it all just comes together, and in the middle of a long string of so-so pictures, one flashes out as having just what you were after. This is the far end of Hindmarsh Island, Lake Alexandrina, South Australia, the area known as the Murray Mouth, where Australia’s greatest river meets the Southern Ocean, on September 20^th, 2018. The right degree of telephoto, a nice, level horizon line, the right quality of light through and against the overcast... The afternoon light made the whole arc of the lagoon silver, and just to look at the picture brings back the tug of the sea wind, the endless rush and race of the waves and the cries of gulls. There are dozens of other pictures from that moment but none quite grabbed the intensity in such an aesthetic package. There was no clever photographic trickery, other that seeing the conditions and zooming into the area where the light was working its magic on the waters and the wet sand of a falling tide. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Flawed Photo on a Rainy Day in Blackpool

This is (I think!) Lytham Rd, Blackpool, England, on a stormy day approaching winter. There’s good old Blackpool Tower in the background. The reason my memory is dodgy today is that this is a long time ago—November 18^th, 2006 is the date stamp of the image file. It’s only a 2mp image—I was economising on card space in those days, not realising that it really didn’t matter. This was my first trip to the UK and I’d dropped by Blackpool to visit a pen friend (now deceased) and make a pilgrimage to his shop. A hail storm came in off the Irish Sea while I was out and about, and I remember having fish and chips in a small corner shop while hailstones bounced in at the door.

Artistically, it’s a reminder of what not to do: the bin in the foreground ruins the shot, which is probably why I never used it before. But the sense of place is strong in this picture: the people, the vehicles, the storm sky receding with weak sunshine on the wet pavers... If I’d had my wits about me I would have walked to the other side of the bin, to exclude it, yet got substantially the same picture. But I wasn’t thinking in those terms—I saw the lighting and general composition, and grabbed it.

So there you are—a picture with a number of merits about it, and one glaring drawback. I could crop the bin out, but cropping horizontally would also exclude those lovely reflections in the pavers. Cropping vertically, while creating a nice picture, loses the street scene to right and places the lamp post very close to the right hand edge. Does that feel jarring? I’m not sure, so the cropped image is below—please compare and make your own evaluation! Minor post-processing—a touch of contrast, sharpness and extra colour. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

PS: Two posts in quick succession make up for that fortnight with nothing!

Evening at Altitude

There’s an axiom in photography that ‘you have to be there to get the shot,’ meaning that nature and events shape themselves, and the photographer freezes a moment in time from a particular place in space, and those things will never align just the same way again. This is so true of shooting skies, or of travel photography, when your own POV is in motion relative to your subject matter. I took this frame on November 7^th, 2012, on my fifth trip to the UK, from a Malaysian Airlines A380 on my way up to Kuala Lumpur on the first leg of the journey, and we had just crossed the Australian north coast. This is the evening light on the Timor Sea, the sun through thick weather reduced to that golden flare reflecting from the waves, as tropical cloud made a riot of shapes and forms, and infinite hues, all about. The sky was particularly forthcoming on that flight, with amazing cloudscapes and lighting qualities, that made the simple act of catching a plane into a photographer’s adventure. Minor post-processing—a touch of contrast and extra colour. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Dark Capture Lottery

 

To an old chip, low light could be the kiss of death. But, in a way, the new super-fast light-gathering digital cameras have taken some of the trickery out of it, because it used to be very creative—trying to accommodate a long shutter speed in low light without blurring the shot. Now you can point and shoot at thousands of ISO (ASA as film speed was rated in the old days), without incurring unacceptable digital grain, but a decade and a half ago it was not so easy. This is the Georgian Crescent in Whitby (the hotel where Bram Stoker wrote Dracula may actually be in this picture!), the night before I set out for home at the end of my November, 2011 trip. I took a wander around the town with my camera to see what I could catch. Light on the river, street lights, street scenes—but all hampered by the light gathering ability of the reliable (old) camera. I’m unsure exactly how I got this one to come out sharp—I may have balanced it against a street lamp or other vertical post. If it was hand-held then it was simply luck that I didn’t move while the shutter was open. But by this point in my travels it was second nature to support the camera against something solid to prevent movement when shooting in the gloom. Minor adjustments were made in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Art of Accepting What’s There

Every photographer hopes for spectacular lighting conditions and weather that is kind to his or her composition. The plain fact is that we don’t always get those things (I was sunny when I left Adelaide, and the grey skies and rain began at the first stop, Melbourne), and we work with what we have—making a silk purse from a sow’s ear at least some of the time! But when you’ve travelled across the world and have a particular day available for walking out and shooting what’s there, you make what the conditions give you, and with any luck you can come up with something that’s worth looking at. This was my first day in Sunderland in November 2011 (I don’t have accurate dates, I forgot to set date and time when I cleared the flashcard for the trip!), and I would be occupied at the conference at the university from the following day, so this was it—sight seeing, if possible, through mist and drizzle. Well, I went out and walked, and I shot all sorts—Roker Park, Mowbray Park, the Wintergardens, the museum, street scenes, the river, the foreshore. It’s the same outing as my post “Nature’s Effortless Drama,” and one or two others. This is a view over the lower river, looking out into the North Sea. Sunderland is a busy port for shipping, and the river is a highway for trade. This picture has almost the texture of a watercolour, created by a buildup of washes to depict the flat, misty conditions. This is what it looked like, and I recorded the thick, hazy day in all its glory. I think there is aesthetic appeal in this—the starkness, the apparent “hardness” of the day, metaphorical, if you will, of the bulwark of human industriousness against the impersonal forces of nature. A bright, sunny day would give this view a very different emotional context, but here the dreary weather asks the viewer to think more deeply about the scene. Colour and contrast were adjusted slightly in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

One Sunset Among Many

 

Over the years I’ve had the chance to photograph many sunsets, sometimes with long series of frames capturing the whole event. This was one such occasion, on the way back from a drive down the Fleurieu which had taken in Hindmarsh Falls not long before (July 17^th, 2017). The vantage point was an overlook on the highway down Sellick’s Hill, giving a wonderful view out over the Gulf St Vincent, and the weather front approaching from the southwest over the sea was the perfect medium through which the declining sun could work its magic. I have dozens of frames from about this point to late in the event when colours had faded to pastel shades, but I can’t get enough of those with the richer tones. There was no photographic trickery here, just point and shoot at fair telephoto settings to exclude the silhouetted shoulders of hills. No enhancement was done, this is what it looked like and what the camera recorded. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

How to Cheat at Wildlife Photography

 

Since when have I been a birding photographer? That’s my sister’s province, and I wouldn’t dream of trying it! But this was a little different. This pic was taken at Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary in the Adelaide Hills, on October 31^st, 2018, during an afternoon visit, and those who have been there will know how it came about. The restaurant has a long wall of plate glass looking into a protected garden where the birds come to feeders, and if you’re a fair hand with zoom and framing, you can grab studies like this from your seat. The chip handled the lighting conditions wonderfully. Cheating, yes, but I was not going to turn down the chance of a pic like this when the birds were barely three metres from me, and sitting still to be photographed! This picture was mot enhanced in any way. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Happy New Year’s Eve!