Gothic Skies

I love these broody, atmospheric shots. The old Fuji chip is great at handling these conditions for maximum drama—maybe not with the mid-tone values a modern chip would deliver, nor of course the resolution, but oh, how it captures density and balance! This frame is part of my shoot at Crystal Palace Park, just north of Croydon, England, on November 20^th, 2012. I was in the southern city for a couple of days and took the opportunity of a ten minute run up the railway line to the old park, to see Waterhouse Hawkins’s dinosaurs from the Great Exhibition of 1852—long obsolete views, of course, but they are still so evocative, especially when the weather is being dramatic. Yes, it was chilly, yes it was raining, but it was the only chance I was going to get, so I stuck with it, walked the park and shot every frame I could snare in the hopes some would be useful. Of course, the light was soft and grey, and the best shots are the ones that exploit the conditions, like this. The bare trees against the lowering sky so superbly evoke the time of year and the locale in the global north. It is a very welcome contrast to the monotony of heat and humidity prevailing in Australia at time of posting... Adjustments to colour, contrast, gamma balance and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Street Sculptures in Hastings

Imagine being presented with a giant chrome octopus playing chess, on a seaside street near the English Channel? Hastings had a series of metal sculptures celebrating marine life sited in the old streets near the seafront, and I had the pleasure of encountering them when I was in Hastings on November 15^th, 2012. I was there to catch the Aussie band I follow in a performance at the Stag Inn, on Allsaints Street, a memorable event all by itself, but I had the chance to photograph Hastings in late autumn light, light rays over the Channel, local curiosities, and to have a jar in a couple of historic pubs, like The Cinque Port Arms. That was my last time on tour over there, and I miss it a lot. Adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Looking Down on a Rainforest

 

Apologies for the dearth of posts this month—I’ve been concentrating on other tasks and it slipped my mind!

One can almost feel the humidity, a sticky heat surrounding these tropical broad-leaf trees—but the warmth was a relief. The structures amongst them are a giveaway: this is the Wintergardens in Sunderland, a cold, northern city, in the grey November of 2011. I was my fourth UK trip when I wandered through the Museum and its associated hothouse, before taking a stroll in Mowbray Park behind them. The lighting conditions were grey and flat, and this image is enhanced to bring up colour and contrast in Irfanview. It was an interesting aside from the grey streets, and the only other tropical house I’ve been in besides that Victorian classic in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Longing for Flight

The title says it all. It is now getting on for twelve years since I was last on a plane. I got a bit blasé about air travel, having been on planes a fair few times between 2006 and 2014, but I did not expect the world, or my circumstances, to change so far that I’d not have the opportunity again. Work, spiralling costs, the pandemic, international unrest, you name it, they all came together to glue me to the spot, thus my overseas photos are now an old selection. Ah well, can’t be helped. I got this frame in November, 2011, on the leg from Melbourne up to Singapore, during my fourth UK trip. The bright colours and sunshine at altitude are so different from the grey, foggy, flat conditions on the ground when I got there! The sky seems welcoming, clouds below in their infinite variety—it makes me miss actually being there and seeing it—the feel of G force as the journey begins, hearing the tire-burn on landing, watching the skyscape stream by with the different times of day, always on the lookout for that interesting pic—I travelled with the camera around my neck most of the time. I’m sure such opportunities will come again, but by then it may be some hypersonic airliner connecting Singapore with London in less time than it takes to get from Adelaide to Singapore... Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Glorious Reds

Autumn is always wonderful, but some years are better than others. This year we chased fall colours in the hills but the display seemed rather half-hearted. This pic is a simple snap of a tree in its full glory—taken on May 13^th, 2018, at Riverbend Park, Clarendon. The sky is still pure summer blue. But the trees have been turning for months—2025 saw the Adelaide hills stay yellow until mid-year because the rains just didn’t come. The photographer takes advantage of the display wherever it’s found, and when, by luck, one finds it. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Placid Waters

A simple shot but it has the feel of a classical painting—the composition of the far shore and island, reflected in the barely-rippled surface... This is Playford Lake at Belair National Park, South Australia, a frequently-shot destination, and though the scenery remains more or less the same, time of day can dramatically change how the lake looks. Light, is, after all, everything, and the lake can often demand to be photographed by the sensitive observer. I captured this frame during a hills meander on May 9^th, 2023, looking east from the top end of the lake. Frame-up and keeping the image level were the keys here. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Sunset in Telephoto

Sunsets are organic images, building, changing and g-fading in response to natural factors. The configuration of the clouds, the angle of the sunlight falling on them—all conspire to make each sunset different from every other. I shot this one on May 23^rd, 2023, almost at the end of a lengthy series, as the finale to a long day's expedition that took us all overt the near north—Lenswood, the Barossa, the Whispering Wall, Gleeson Wetland and so forth. With the sunset building, we pulled over and spent a while shooting the flaming sky from beside the highway, as photographers sometimes do. No particular photographic effects, though this is a high telephoto shot, closing in on the richest point in the sky. Unzoomed frames are mainly blue-toned, with the reds confined to a band low toward the horizon. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Brooding Clouds

The Southern Ocean can always turn on dramatic skies, and any day on the south coast of South Australia can yield a broad canvas of light. I recorded this frame in a sequence at Clayton Bay, down on the Alexandrina Lakes system, on May 26^th, 2018. I’ve posted from this shoot before. The weather was changing dramatically as a front moved up, May typically being the tail-end of the warm weather down here (though this year the hills weren’t green until June!) No particular photographic effects; this was how the chip handled the high contrast of looking into the brightest part of the sky. I adjusted colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview, plus some squaring up with fine rotation; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Vertical Motif

Sometimes you can isolate elements in an environment that group naturally together—low clouds making horizontal lines over the horizon, a seaway or roads, for instance. Here, these palm trees make a vertical vanishing point symmetry with the Buffalo monument at Glenelg, South Australia, commemorating the landing place of the first European settlers in 1836. I cropped the image to exclude ground clutter and the overhang of a building to the left, which streamlined or de-cluttered the image, and the only detraction now is the wires strung between the posts. I could go in and remove them digitally, but that seems like kinda cheating. I took this shot on the 20^th of October, 2016, during an outing with my sister-in-law from across the water. The image is just as it came off the card, with the exception of some fine rotation and the cropping. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Classical-Style Composition

As with the “Hidden in the Woods” post, this is another ‘see-it-snap-it’ composition. When one’s eye is attuned to composition in the manner of art, landscapes and structures sometimes come together from various perspectives and ‘gel’ in the sense of looking just-so. The buildings, half seen through the trees, may be taken to be the subject matter, but the woods are the statement of nature overlying human influence on the world. The arch of the foliage at the top almost frames the picture, while the conformation is suggestive of Fragonard or Constable. It was a grey, soft-light day when I snapped this, in November, 2011, in Mowbray Park, Sunderland, during my fourth UK expedition. I adjusted colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview, plus some squaring up with fine rotation; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Looking Back a Hundred Years

Here is an interesting scene—a British railway platform, c. 1920s, as recreated in meticulous detail in the National Railway Museum, York. Here one steps back a century—no digital screens, no neon lights, nothing post-dating the era of steam and newspapers. This is the world of P G Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, when movies were silent and radio a novelty. This is the genius of the museum scenario, a kind of immersion in which you can look into another time. The light levels in the museum are quite soft, so I was holding the camera against a vertical surface for stability, and did quite well—the light gathering ability of the old technology was only a fraction of today’s point-and-shoot ability. Supporting the camera during long exposures became second nature. I took this shot on my UK trip of November, 2011, the last time I visited the NRW, and it certainly appeals to my fascination with vanish point symmetry. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Hidden in the Woods

Here’s an example of a reflex shot that turned out just right. It’s a case of seeing the composition and grabbing the shot, just frame and shoot. I snapped this one through the train window on the way to Cardiff on November 21^st, 2012. The sunlight striking the vertical building, framed by the green woods behind and the dark, shadowed foreground vegetation works perfectly, and I did not even need to square up the image with fine rotation. It’s pure composition—I have no idea what this building is (a church, by the looks of it) or even where it is, it just works as a pure visual motif. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.