Vertiginous View

This is another frame from the set I took at York Minster, England, in November, 2011, on my fourth UK trip (I mistakenly quoted it as my third in a previous post). This was once the tallest building in Europe, some 800 years ago. Everything I said before applies, but this frame, with the skew-off in framing, creates a more vertiginous aspect. The sun came out—that’s the big thing, because so many of my UK trip photos are dominated by grey skies and racing clouds, which, though spectacular in their own right, can get a bit monotonous. Here is proof that blue skies do occur in the British Isles—just now and then! Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

Hard, Grey and Cold

 

This image evokes thoughts of wind. It was blowing a gale when I was out on that day, and it was so cold. I took this frame on November 22^nd, 2012, close to the waterfront at Tiger Bay, Cardiff. I’m standing practically on top of the secret Torchwood base, here, sheltering under the overhang of the Millennium Centre, looking toward Roald Dahl Plass, beyond which is the bay. I was in town to see the Dr Who Experience (discontinued several years ago), and was glad I braved the weather for the chance to do the tour. No one was out and about—I seemed to have the place to myself, as presumably the locals know to stay indoors when the wind off the Atlantic comes in so strong, and only crazy tourists are abroad. The wan light and hard surfaces create a texture of such starkness: the image is engaging merely for its brutalism. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Hidden Sun

There’s nothing so ephemeral as sun rays through cloud, shifting as the clouds move and the sun declines... They’re moments of time never to be recaptured, yet can be frozen in images (I almost typed ‘on film’) for posterity. I took a series of frames when nature made this show as heavy weather blew up over Hastings, on November 15^th, 2012. I was on my fifth UK trip, visiting towns in the south, and Hastings turned on some thick weather. The camera chip handled the contrast amazingly. While the pictures looking away from the sun were flat and soft, as is to be expected on such a grey day, when looking toward the spectacle over the Channel the sense of “light in the darkness” came through profoundly. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Fun with Low Light

This is another of the group I took when leaving England in 2010. This is at the very doors of the Heathrow Terminal, looking across the arrivals area, and just before they turned on the purple neon (find that in an older post). Notice the steel anti-ram-raider bollards—I think I rested the camera on top of one of them to stabilise it. In the previous frame a moving vehicle is blurred, telling you how long the shutter was open, while in this one nothing was moving, creating this beautifully textured, nuanced image. The only adjustment I made is a tiny touch of sharpening, otherwise this is exactly as the chip read the moment. This was November 16^th, 2010, and I was glad to be heading home, as I had been quite unwell on this expedition. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

The Tall Trees

These are Pinus radiata at Kuitpo Forest, south of Adelaide. Kuitpo is farmed timber, and these trees are probably the better part of a hundred years old. The symmetry of the straight trunks struck me with its hint of a vanishing point, while the sun through the pattern they create was irresistible lighting. A simple photo, taken on August 31^st, 2017, on an outing to the woods, but it’s engaging in the sense of ‘you had to be there.’ I can almost smell the pine needles and hear the wind in the tops. Minor adjustments to colour and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Full Moon Rising

A full moon rising over an Australian city, but the trees give it a bush feel. I took this pic from the upstairs balcony of our last house, on July 14^th 2011. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then! It was nice to have an upstairs (it was nice to have a swimming pool...) and occasionally there were photo ops without leaving home. This is an interesting pic, not for the moon but foe the trees. The sun is just down and the evening light still enough to front-light the trunks, which gives a very pleasing effect, The moon is a burned out disc, which is to be expected at the kind of exposure needed to register the trees in detail. It must also have been a very still evening, because the lens would have been open a while, yet the leaves have not blurred. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Surfing Weather

 

This is King’s Beach, west of Victor Harbor, South Australia. These heights are westward from The Bluff and Petrel Cove, looking toward Cape Jervis, and give a wonderful overview of one of South Australia’s best surfing beaches. The reach of the Southern Ocean throws excellent combers onto these shallows, racing in for hundreds of metres. Little wonder it’s a magnet for those with salt water in their veins. I took this frame as part of a set on April 7^th, 2018, on a long trip south, taking in many of our favourite spots. The weather was warm and clear, the way Australian summers linger (the weather often seems to break at Easter—no matter when Easter actually falls!) No special photographic technique here, this was all about framing the scene as a pleasing composition. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

A Disconcerting Landscape

Why disconcerting? Well, first, for the sheer starkness of a dry, Australian summer—harvested fields or long-grazed-down paddocks under that merciless sky. But there’s the simple fact a cloud had drawn before the sun, so while the background is sunlit and the sky a fleece-strewn blue, the foreground is in shadow, and that lends a very strange feeling to the image. This pic was taken in the southern hills near Strathalbyn, South Australia, on December 30^th, 2018. I was airing out the camera on a new phone at the time and seeing how it handled various conditions. The cloud shadow intruded upon the moment and it was worth capturing for both its aesthetic oddness, and as a test of the phone’s chip. General tweaks in Irfanview. Leagoo M9. Image by Mike.

Changeing Skies

 

The title of this post has two meanings. I took this frame on my way to the UK on November 8^th, 2012, so I was changing skies between hemispheres, early spring to autumn; but a storm was moving in at the time and the local sky was thus changing rapidly. I had a brief, unplanned stopover in Kuala Lumpur when the Air Malaysia A380 had a technical problem, and the flight resumed in the early afternoon the following day. This frame was taken from the height of the lower deck, a sweet view of an AM 747 as the A380 taxied out. The sky was interesting, quite dramatic in its way, though the foreground had full sun. Coming up behind the POV was a tick weather front, and we took off into a storm. The pic was squared up very slightly with fine rotation, and colour, contrast, brightness and sharpness were marginally adjusted in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

NB: Tomorrow will mark two years since I resurrected this photo blog, and this is my 107^th post in that time.

Photograph of the Photographer

Sometimes life presents you with an irony, like shooting yourself in a mirror. Here, the photographer becomes the study. This was the 15^th of November, 2011, in the British sea town of Whitby, and I had gone exploring on the rocky shore below the cliffs eastward. Among my studies of the grey weather, of sunrays through cloud and reflections on wet mud flats, I found such a study on offer, when I noticed this photographer who had taken his equipment out across the rocky platform at low water to shoot back west toward the breakwaters and lighthouses. His pictures were probably pretty spectacular, while mine was simply opportunistic, and smile-worthy. It’s not often one photographer captures another in pursuit of his craft! Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike. Mm

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 simple point and shoot, 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.