History, by Evening Light

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This is opportunistic shooting: the sun came between clouds and just for a few minutes flooded the Esk Valley with warm light. I've always said the quality of light in England is entirely distinct, and here it paints a scene from history. The abbey began its fall into ruin in the 16th century, but had a long heritage, an earlier ecclesiastical building on the same site was sacked by the Vikings in the 9th century. This is the east side of Whitby Harbour, and it is known there has been constant habitation here since at least the 7th century. The marine communications tower beyond the abbey really reminds you it's the modern age! While the town as we know it has many buildings dating from the last few hundred years, it is a place rich in its own past, which very much retains its flavour, stays alive, as the town moves into the future. This was a simple photograph: catch the light, frame the composition, remember to keep the camera level, and expose the frame. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic exposure, telephoto. November, 2006. Image by Mike.

Scoping the Ruins

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The Fuji FinePix S5600 has a dual zoom function, an optical zoom plus a digital zoom that creates a second range at the penalty of gradually degrading image quality (it pixelises). The zooms are pretty powerful, 12x in each range, so finding a subject far enough away to really do justice to the available power can be a bear. This was a zoom test when the subject matter appeared -- it was late November 2006 and I was standing in the forecourt of Pannet Park Museum, Whitby, North Yorkshire on an overcast, soft evening (my batteries were about to give out in a few more frames, another nuisance!) I scoped in on the ruined Abbey on the East Cliff, right across the harbour and valley of the River Esk, the distance would have to be a straight line of 1000 yards or more. This was maximum optical zoom, retaining full resolution. The image has been cropped to drop out a pesky flagpole and an exra rooftop, and sharpened a little, but otherwise this was very much how it looked through the lens. Exposure was fully automatic. Image by Mike.