Momentary Sun

The sun finding a way through the overcast elevates moody, murky images into clear, colourful pieces with an upbeat feel. I snagged this frame in the gardens of the York Museum in the November of 2011, on my fourth UK trip for the purposes of presenting at a conference at the University of Sunderland. York has been a favourite place since childhood and I often tried to swing by when I was in the northeast. After thick weather for much of the trip, the appearance of sunshine during my afternoon in York was a welcome change, and I was lucky enough to be among the gardens and ruins of the medieval St Mary’s Abbey. The place offered interesting compositions, and the light made it all the more worthwhile. Squared up with custom rotation; minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Medieval Fortifications

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Nowhere in Australia or the US will you see architecture over 700 years old, but in the Old World it's still there. Stone is a durable material, and when these walls and towers were raised (during the wars between William Wallace and Edward I, if I have my history right, though on foundations which in places are Roman) they were the epitome of military engineering. Now, these walls which surround the old city of York, England, and fortify the River Ouse which passes through the city, are lovingly-preserved remainders of a time gone by, and through which the new city has grown up and around. I took this photograph at the beginning of November 2007, to capture the texture of stone and the tonal values in the shadow areas against the water. The chip has done an amazing job of exposing the shadows in such detail, burning out the background in proportion. The juxtaposition of the new and the old is a recurring theme in any study of the Old World, and eternally fascinating. Contrast, colour and sharpness were adjusted fractionally. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

In the time warp ... Adelaide, of course!

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Architecture fascinates me, with the way it pretends to be anywhere but where it is, and in any time period but our own. And nowhere in the world is more of an architectural time warp than the North Terrace area of Adelaide, South Australia. In five hundred meters, you can see 1970s modernism, Romanesque frontages, nineteenth century colonial Australian, eighteenth or nineteenth century British India ... and then you get along to Adelaide University, and -- dang! This one is pretending to be a fifteenth century castle. It's absolutely magnificent. These are the hallowed 'halls of learning,' of which students and visitors can tell you a few rare stories! The image was easy to capture, just a question of getting close enough to put the sun just behind the roof there. This threw the building into silhouette and burned out the sky, of course, but this was easy to fix at the software level later. I might have stuck around and done the perfect manual exposure, but to get this shot at all was a question of patience: taxis backing in and out, students by the thousand trooping by. Eventually, you grab what you can and enhance it later. Thank heavens for digital photography! Photo by Mel, 2009.

Past Meets Present

This is a fairly simple shot, low light as it was approaching dusk and amongst high, narrow streets the light was dim enough for the shop lights to really stand out, yet there was enough light for passers-by to not be blurred. The amazing thing is the medieval architecture, the overhang of the buildings as the floors go up. This is not a movie set: it's the old town on the hill at York, in Yorkshire, England, within the ancient city walls and a few hundred yards from the 13th-century cathedral. There are courses of stone on that hill laid by Romans when the town was called Eboracum. You can feel history all around you, even the street market is an institution from the Middle Ages. You have to blink and remember that these narrow streets have been walked for maybe a thousand years, even more. November, 2006; Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.