Nature’s Effortless Drama

I took this shot in November, 2011, during my fourth UK trip. It’s a view over the Sunderland foreshore in thick and hazy weather, one of a series, this one with a fair measure of zoom used. I took a walk when I got into Sunderland (for a conference at the university) after a long journey from Australia, and you can see by how low the sun is that the date is well advanced toward winter. This was probably mid-afternoon but the sun didn’t seem to pass about 25 degrees of elevation at that latitude at that time of year. I did not process this image at all—it speaks for itself. The haze, the sun through cloud, the way the chip exposed on the brighter sky and plunged the land and sea into twilight, are, to me quite perfect in their own right. This is the kind of show nature turns on all the time, and thick weather can deliver images far more dramatic than bright sunshine and sharp shadows. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

A Giant Passing By

Here is an interesting photographic proposition—a twilight image from an unstable platform. Today, with speed-of-light ISO available, it’s not an issue, but back when this was taken, just over 14 years ago, on November 15^th, 2010, ISO was as limited at dpi, and you did your best. I was on the ferry Pride of the Tyne, on the return leg of a trip to Tynemouth Castle and Priory, crossing the wide river at dusk, and the ferry paused to allow a ship to go by on its way out of port, accompanied by the pilot boat. The ship was the Komet III, riding high as if devoid of cargo, and her towering seven-story superstructure seemed disproportionately tall—to this day I can only imagine how such a ship would roll in a heavy seaway! But as a photographer, I got to expose a whole sequence as the ship glided by in the soft evening colours, and this one is the most detailed close-up. Minimal adjustment was required—she was squared up by a little to get the verticals true, then contrast and colour were tweaked. A pleasing image—I’ve often thought the old Fuji chip handles low light conditions very nicely indeed. The same camera is still in action today! Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Fun with Reflections

You can get up to all sorts of tricks with reflections, but sometimes you find the reflection is the whole image. This is a 1926 steam locomotive, preserved in the National Railway Museum, York., UK., which I photographed on my visit in late 2011, and the lighting conditions in the sheds were tricky—soft enough to make blur a constant hazard with the light gathering ability of the cameras of the day. (Now, no problem, they handle low light like magic, but then? It took ingenuity.) The engines on display are polished to the nines, and the interplay of artificial light and gleaming surfaces did all the work in this image. It’s not even enhanced, in any way! Just metal, paint, a lot of hard work with polishing tools, and the interplay of light, creating a machine-as-art situation. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Calm Bay

This is Horseshoe Bay, Victor Harbor, South Australia, photographed on April 16^th, 2019. It’s a simple point and shoot at medium-high telephoto value, from the carpark at the Bluff. This is the trip where I was airing out the Fuji S6500, a very good camera with lovely lens and chip performance. I got some great shots that day, and this one is attractive for its simplicity. There’s enough resolution to see people on the far beach as surely as leaves in the foreground, and the lighting conditions were very nice that day. Just a nice photograph! Minor adjustments in IrfanView. Fuji FinePix S6500. Image by Mike

 

The Drama of Evening

Sunsets grab your attention in the most dramatic way—perhaps as much for their ephemeral nature as for their beauty. They last only minutes and every one is different, an infinite range of variation all down to the ever-changing clouds. This was one of the series I took from the vantage of Flinders University many years ago, this frame date-stamped February 13^th, 2005. I was in the final stretch if my Masters Degree at the time. I could have fiddled with this image a lot, and probably ended up losing the striking depth and vibrance of the moment. All I did was pull up the gamma value a couple of notches to bring out a little mid-tone detail, and take it one click sharper. I considered using fine rotation to level up the horizon but it was going to cut into the image at its edges in ways that would sacrifice something of the moment, so I left it as is. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Geometry and Reflections

 

My eye is always caught by the interplay of straight lines in perspective. That pays into my fascination with vanishing point symmetry—all parallel lines have that element, but only extended lines display it in an eye catching way. This is the outside steps of the Medical Sciences building at Flinders University of South Australia, photographed on 5^th August, 2011. The building was new at the time, if I remember correctly, and this accessway is on the outdoor route for walking from the university down to the hospital to connect with the bus home. This was late afternoon, and the interplay of the shade slats, the stairs, the reflections in the plate glass to the left, and the general afternoon light, created a striking image that made me pause, pull out my camera (not sure why I had it at the Uni on that day), and take a whole series of frames. This one seems to capture the best balance of all elements. No to minimal enhancement was needed. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

The Timeless Gothic

 

Here is an uncomplicated picture by any standards, made special by its subject matter, This soaring Gothic architecture is York Minster, which I photographed in late 2011, during my fourth UK trip. The weather was being kind on that visit, as opposed to another trip to York when it was pouring down. Vanishing point symmetry is always visually appealing, and the built environment aspect is special as it carries a context of Medieval times. No enhancement at all was done, this is just as she came off the camera. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

I’ve been particularly busy/distracted in the last few weeks and had not noticed the time going by, so I’ll put up three pics in quick succession.

Struggling with the Sun

 

One thing you have no control over when you’re sitting in a window seat on a plane is the relative angle of the sun. If the plane is flying this way, the sun is there, of it’s flying that way, it’s over there, and the sun is either in your field of view early or late in the day, or too high to invade your frames in the middle hours. This pic was one of the series I took on approach to Singapore on the way home from the UK in November, 2007. The sun was low as it was late afternoon when we arrived, and the approach pattern saw a nice panoply of seaways, ships lying at anchor, islands in the glittering waters and so forth, all of which cried out to be photographed. In this frame, the sun is low and, while in picture, the cloud haze has cut the glare, and the chip has handled it very well. There’s only a suggestion of lens flare, and for once the imperfections on the plane window are not apparent. The flaps are already down, which tells you the plane was not far from Changi Airport. Nice texture and toning—contrast, gamma, colour and sharpness were adjusted a little in IrfanVew. I was also shooting at low DPI in those days. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

Compressed Perspective

The magic of the telephoto lens is making the middle distance seem close and the distant seem a lot nearer than it is. When you combine the two elements, the compression is delightfully deceptive. Here’s a simple shot taken around early November to December, 2007 (I don’t seem to have an exact date available) on my one and only visit to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, to the east of London. (Yes, I stood with a foot each each hemisphere, astride the prime meridian, as everyone does!) This is a zoom shot and the outdoor cafe area in the foreground is seen against the Millennium Dome, which must be a couple of kilometres away on the other side of the Thames. It's also an exercise in pulling information out of the dark foreground without burning out the background, so the chip handled the situation very well indeed, requiring only minor tweaks to gamma value, contrast and colour. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

Different Lens Coatings = Different Lens Flare

A few posts back I talked about the lens flare characteristics of different lenses, how when using the old, reliable Fuji S5600 I learned to shade the lens when shooting into the sun quadrant to keep the flare effect from occurring. This frame was captured with that camera’s later brother, the Fuji HS10, and here I was shooting toward the sun by default. I was high in the grandstand of the 2019 RAAF Edinburgh Air Show, and there was no shade at all. I remember shooting with this camera and the S5600 at the same time, both round my neck and being used for different subjects. I was eager to explore the HS10’s high telephoto range, as airshows are notorious for generating lots of pictures of bright skies with aeroplanes so far away and moving so fast they are mere dots, and I found I had plenty of reach with this one, without serious loss of smoothness in the image. Here I’m looking toward the assembly point where aircraft moved from the parking area to the runway. The Gloster Meteor classic jet fighter is frame against the fuel trucks, with a marshal alongside, radio in hand. It’s a closer angle on a frame up I had just done at a wider setting. There is no flare in the image (except around the actual reflection of the sun in the canopy) and I’m going to assume both a superior lens coating on this model, and some degree of shading—usually with my baseball cap. I remember being very busy working the pictures on that day (November 10^th, 2019, just before covid began to run rampage through the community.) Colour, contrast and sharpness were tweaked very slightly. Fuji HS10. Image by Mike.

New Camera, Old Subject

 

When trying out the characteristics if a new piece of kit, one often gravitates to well-known subjects so as to compare results, and I found myself doing just that on an early shoot trying out the camera of my new phone, the Xiaomi Poco M5. It has the highest resolution of any camera in the house, and the chip behaves very nicely under a wide range of conditions, including indirect and low-light. I found the resolution fails quickly at high telephoto values, but so long as I stay away from that much zoom the pictures are exceptionally crisp and clear, lending themselves to cropping well inside the image to pull subject from background as necessary. I went for a stroll in Adelaide’s Botanic Gardens on July 10^th, 2024, and the weather was very kind. This is a view of the tropical house, a Victorian structure for all kinds of exotic plant life that requires conditions never less than warm and steamy. Tweaks were just a fraction more contrast and colour. Xiaomi Poco M5. Image by Mike.

The Mighty Murray

Here’s a frame I captured on October 6^th, 2018—almost exactly six years ago. This is the River Murray photographed from an overlook at Tailem Bend, in the hour before sunset. Not quite “golden hour,” the toning of the evening was quite blue, but the majestic sweep of the river, framed in the gum trees, makes an appealing composition, especially against that great, complex skyscape. This seems to be before I got the trick through my head about shading the lens with my cap when shooting anywhere near the sun quadrant of the sky, thus the lens flare in the lower right. It’s endemic to the nature of lenses, but unless lens flare is the theme or object of an image, I must say I’m not a great fan of it in my images. But this is a worthwhile shot, and the lens flare is part f the story. Minor adjustments in Irfanview, including increasing gamma value to pull information out of the shadowed areas. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike