Old Streets by the Sea

As a summer town, Blackpool is usually recorded on film in the good weather. That famous tower is commonly shot against a blue sky, and from the perspective of a busy, bustling foreshore, filled with holidaymakers. So when I was walking these streets in November, 2006, dodging hail and showers between comics shops and fast food shops, it struck me as an atmospheric and atypical way to see the place. Though many of these buildings probably date from the early 20th century, the streets themselves are 19th century or earlier, and the perspective compression of a mild telephoto effect here really shows up the organic lack of symmetry. These streets are probably less than 100 meters from the beach and were built over ancient dunes, thus the rise and fall of profile and undulation along the coast. This gives a rustic, weather-beaten character which is very photogenic. The picture was sharpened, slightly gamma-corrected, and the contrast and colour were brought up a little. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Icy Rain and a Holiday Beach

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English weather is a joke, but to be fair, this is November and sunseekers are in Spain or Malta...or the Caribbean. I visited Blackpool for a couple of days in 2006 and my only glimpse of the Irish Sea was this heaving, grey mass with thundering white surf, and it took me several goes to reach the seafront itself as hail kept driving me back. This was the sea fronting the 'Golden Mile' of amusements and attractions: the town was still busy, but a shadow of itself in the summer, and a vivid memory was eating at a dine-in fish and chip shop while hail made a white carpet outside. It's a simple shot, telephoto to create the composition, then fight the buffet of the roaring wind to get a reasonably decent horizon line. The conditions were so hostile I did not stick around to take multiple frames of the same subject from a variety of vantages, so as to pick the cherry among them. Mild enhancement includes sharpening, contrast and colour-saturation. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Grey Day at the Stones

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The light was poor because the weather was bad: the weather report for that day said there were waterspouts along the Channel coast of England, and up in Wiltshire patchy rain was going through all morning under a solid grey Atlantic sky. The rain doesn't really copy in the image, though by the end of the shoot I couldn't protect the lens from collecting raindrops any longer. Shutter speeds were slow to catch the light so the rain blurred and disappeared, which was just as well as at times there was a 45-degree slant on it. The conditions were pretty miserable for my only visit so far to the Neolithic national monument of Stonehenge, in December 2006, but even that couldn't damped the wonder of actually being there and seeing the world-famous proto-historic astronomical site. Of course, the sun came out ten minutes after the bus left... The image has minimal enhancement and is cropped super-wide. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Waiting for rain

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The Adelaide heatwave is due to break, even as I write this. After an eon of scorching temperatures -- after scores of people have perished, and the state has been on alert in the fear of a firestorm today -- the sky is at last darkening, the wind is shifting direction, the temperature is falling. It's going to be cool ... but there's no rain in these clouds. And what this state needs more than anything, now, is rain. The title of this image is "waiting for rain," but it could just as easily be called "praying for rain!" In the stone age, cave artists would paint the animal they wished to hunt, to capture its magic. I wonder if it works for the weather? It's worth a try! So -- here's an image shot through the windscreen a couple of winters ago, on a road somewhere in the Adelaide Hills. Oh, for this kind of weather right now, right here! Photo by Jade, 2006.

Angry Eye of the Storm

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The weather can play strange tricks at any time, but when you have the right location the phenomena in the sky can be downright creepy. This was early December 2006 and I was in Wiltshire, coach-tripping around Bronze Age antiquities and other sites of historic interest. This was at the medieval village of Upavon, our stop between Avebury and Stonehenge. The weather had been lousy all day, rain in varying amounts, muddy ground, but that had not deterred half the bus load from getting off to exercise their cameras on the ancient monuments of the southcountry. This was a serendipitous shot as I was stretching my legs in the mainstreet: I looked up and found the sun straining through a black cloud, silhouetting a gaunt tree, like something from high fantasy art. Zoom, frame, snap, all in a couple of seconds, before the cloud swept by and the image was lost. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Photo by Mike.

The Olde Magycke Shoppe

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Soft light can do wonders with texture. While a sunny day will throw texture into relief that can stun the eye, an overcast day can blend tones and soften edges until a living place takes on the subtle feeling of a painting. This was a very overcast day, in fact it was raining for most of it, but my exposures were long enough that for the most part the rain did not register. Looking almost like the work of the 'Painter of Light,' and stocking everything from magic books to crop-circle goodies, this is the 'Henge Shop' in the village of Avebury, Wiltshire, England, one of the buildings which stand actually within the arc of the 6000-year old stone circle that dominates the area. It was photographed on a drizzly morning in early December 2006 during a coach trip around the Neolithic and Bronze Age attractions of the south country. The camera did the focus and exposure, I handled the framing and composition. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Photo by Mike, 2006.

La vie en Rose

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The little German town of Handorf in the Adelaide Hills is known for its sausage, beer and great places to eat, but it ought to be known also for its roses. The climate is ideal for rose growing, and these roses are tended by enthusiasts. Seeing them after a rainshower, when the air is filled with their perfume, is a taste of heaven. Fuji Finepix, manual exposure, manual focus. ASA 400 -- conditions were very dim with the overcast which produced the rain. Photo by Jade, February 2008.