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.