As well as this website I now have a ‘portfolio’ website. I guess the difference is that this site is a series of occasional (hopefully) interesting individual picture but the new portfolio site has collections of related pictures. Portfolio sounds a bit grand but why not?
Decaying walls and paint are often interesting, especially when it’s maybe a forgotten Piet Mondrian.
This is definitely an impressive library. The key to the picture is symmetry; and I have almost got that perfect. Almost. I have actually dialled back the cyan colour coming through the windows as it looked artificial.
On a chilly and windy evening I walked up Calton Hill in Edinburgh to see the classic view towards the city with the Dugald Stewart monument on the left side. The sun wasn’t in the right place for that, it turned out. But there were amazing clouds all around. So here are three pictures taken from spots at the top of the hill looking in different directions.
In all cases I’d exposed for the clouds, which means I had to brighten the foregrounds considerably.
Not sure about the last one; the clouds look quite unreal?
I could see all the boats lining up, perhaps for the start of a race, so I tried a bit of In Camera Movement, ICM*, to make the scene more impressionistic than realistic. Just a quick wave of the camera up and down.
The only thing afterwards was deciding how to crop the final image. Close in on the boats? Lots of space? Horizon in the middle, upper or lower third? This is what I decided on in the end. Hope you like it!
*or is it Intentional Camera Movement, or Motion?
I do love a staircase. Maybe not climbing all the way up it, but certainly looking at them.
Many of my astro-related photographs were taken from my back garden during lockdown – remember that? But not this one, although we do have two small eucalyptus trees in the garden, and our area is underpinned by red sandstone. This was in a nice dark area far far away with clear skies. The light is coming from the slightly ajar door of the generator room.
No special kit was used, just a camera, tripod, cable release and 10-20mm lens. The main trick was the semi-secret fact that Nikon Z cameras will automatically and precisely set themselves to infinity focus when switched on, without the need for anything to lock on to. So do that and then turn the autofocus off. Which makes it very simple to set up the camera and start photographing.
Manchester’s architecture is changing faster than I have ever seen before, propelled by modern skyscrapers.
This is old and new Manchester, near Deansgate Station.
Wildflowers are getting more and more popular in Great Britain, which is a good thing for all sorts of reasons, not least they look so appealing. But they can be hard to photograph when there are so many. It’s important to find a focal point, somewhere for the eye to come to rest. In this case it’s a single pink poppy backlit by the sun. Oh yes, the sun. Sometimes a nuisance in flower photography but here it helps make the picture what it is.
An evening walk along the beach. I’m not a natural history photographer but these stranded jellyfish made an unusual and static subject. Being the evening it was getting a bit dark but that also lent atmosphere and they seemed to pick up and concentrate what little light there was left.
