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 third 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

 

Magic Hour in Yorkshire

I took this frame in the late afternoon/early evening of a day in November, 2007, from the window of a moving train on the Esk Valley line between Middlesbrough and Whitby. After many grey skies and soft exposures on my 2007 UK trip, the sun finally—momentarily—came out, and I shot as much as I could, The train windows were not the cleanest, and the internal lights reflected in the glass, so I was constantly trying to find an angle to both catch the scene and exclude reflections. This one has an almost painting-like feel: the softness of even the direct light as “golden hour” progresses—note the length of the tree shadow—and the inherent autumn sombreness combining to create an emotionally evocative image. I left Whitby the next morning, going up the coast to Sunderland, and the light and feel of the next batch of shots is completely different. “Magic hour” indeed! (Just a little contrast work, and one click sharp.) Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

A Grim Magnificence

November 2007 seems such a long time ago! I took this image in Welford Rd. Cemetery, Leicester, UK, across the road from Leicester University, where I was doing a fieldwork survey for my PhD, supervising senior students who were gaining fieldwork course credits by assisting me with the data collection. We had worked through the afternoon, and early evening was coming down by four o’clock or so. The lighting quality created such a painting-like feel, I couldn’t resist grabbing some scenic shots among the dry record images of the gravestones, and as evening progressed the skyscape over the ivy-grown monuments developed a very Gothic feel. Catching detail in the foreground was down to how the chip handled the conditions, and the old Fuji S5600 has always been very good in this respect. I featured one or two shots from my Leicester stopover many years ago, back in the first incarnation of this site. Contrast, gamma and colour were slightly adjusted in Irfanview, otherwise this is just how it looked on the day. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike

Small Harbour

Tour boats at moor, Endeavour Wharf, Whitby, England, November 17^th, 2006. The weather was overcast, as you’d expect so late in the year—note the Christmas decorations are up on the lamp posts. Conditions were not the sort that give you bright, sharp pictures, but I shot what presented itself and there was usually something of interest, if not of earth-shaking photographic merit. This was my first UK trip, to attend a conference at the University of Sunderland, and my first time on British soil in 36 years. I stayed three weeks or so and had a wonderful time, taking 1481 frames in the process. This is not a lot by some standards, I know! Contrast, brightness and colour were adjusted in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Evening Storm

I captured this frame two years and one day ago—September 11^th, 2022. A simple shot, looking west over the back garden hedges, of a storm front moving up from the gulf. This is one of those occasions when nature presents you with a spectacle and says “catch me!” I took a long series of frames that evening, but this one has a strange purple hue to the light that is so effective, so unusual. I could have processed it out, but that’s what the evening looked like, and that’s what I'm presenting. A tiny touch of contrast enhancement was the only effect applied. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Goddess and the Australian Sky

This is the goddess Guan Yin, the 18-metre statue at the Nan Hai Pu Tuo Buddhist Temple at Sellicks Hill, overlooking the Gulf St Vincent. It’s been a landmark for many years (begUn 2011), and construction of the complex is continuing. This frame was taken on April 7^th, 2018, during an expedition down to Victor Harbor and back via Mt Alma, and the weather could not have been more perfect. This shot was not enhanced at all, this is just as it came from the camera. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike. Mm

Reaching for Distance

This shot was an experiment with the high-end of the telephoto range of the camera I was working out at the time. It’s a view from Crowsnest Lookout, on the hills above Victor Harbor and the south coast, with the town of  Middleton (IIRC) in the foreground, taken on April 13th, 2019. That’s the Southern Ocean, with the Coorong barrier beach and Lake Alexandrina in the background. We were into ‘golden hour,’ the sun declining rapidly off to the left. Minor adjustments were made in IrfanView. Fuji FinePix S6500. Image by Mike.