A lovely hour or so at Rowney Warren with Royston Photographic Society’s landscape group. Click images for lightbox.
Tom
Untitled
Manual Work
Gone
I’ve Got You
Serial Print 2023-2024 Round 1
My first entry into a Cambridge Camera Club competition… This is a “Serial” competition which runs across the year in a series of rounds. You submit one colour and one mono print each round and the ultimate rankings are based upon total points.
Judge: Nick Akers.
16 for Final Race and 17 for Local Maximum. Pretty happy with that given the stunning quality of the submissions!
Happenstance
Interesting. I don’t know why this is doing what it is doing. It’s a trial of eleven stacked exposures while I sign something. Full colour but cold white light on a black t-shirt with a black background. There’s a small amount of blue and green in the shirt, but I don’t think that accounts for the interesting colour blooming on the composited image. It’s not working as a strategy for capturing the 3D shape the sign makes in space, which was the motivation for this, but it’s something to bear in mind and experiment with more in future….
It seems to be movement. A composite of images of me sitting still didn’t do it.
Hmm.
Birth of a Star
Bored at home while a man services the air-source heat pump. It’s a rock and roll lifestyle at Cromwell Towers. Spent the morning taking this astronomical image of a blueberry.
Royston Arts Festival | Public Vote
This image was voted second in the public vote at the Royston Arts Festival this year. Pretty pleased. Pipped by the inestimable Bob Coote, so no complaints!
White-Balance Breakthrough
I finally had the advice that enabled me to solve the white-balance problem for my IR images. I had been manually adjusting the Kelvin of my WB, assuming that that would surely cover all of the available points on the cool-to-warm spectrum of the WB on my R5. However if you use the shoot-to-set-WB function and shoot at something green - you get a workable balance from which to channel-swap and whatever to get the effect you want. Many thanks to Ann Miles and Jim Bennett for this.
So this is my first image with a natural-looking sky and spectral vegetation. It’s not art. But it is success!
Double exposure with just one in focus and from a slightly different position.
Botanic Gardens | Cambridge Camera Club
“Gossips”
Subtle double exposure. The ‘other’ image is a close-up of the bark, creating the dappled-colour effect on both trunk and foliage.
Karyotype
Old Chestnut
London Underground
Tube Train Project
I’ve had in mind for a while a project in which I create a grid of square images, each one being of a departing tube train with long exposure smoothing the whole image into a quasi-Rothko set of coloured bands. Since each line has distinctive trains, each image should be fairly distinct though clearly related - and for bonus points it makes a pub quiz item.
So today I emailed TfL’s press office because that’s what you do, and wonderfully they replied straight away. After a six email conversation, for which I am very grateful, permission was secured so long as I hand-held. Cool. So I jumped online and bought a train ticket and parking. Quickly planned the most efficient four stations to catch all of the lines, then a bit of a rush to get to the station but managed it - except the car park was closed to accommodate a bus replacement service. So I found a street and ran back to the station. Made it.
Except I was on the wrong platform. Or, the right platform but the train was over there. And the bridge is still out, so I had to run out of the station and around to grab the train at the last second.
Plan was - take an image per line, disregarding the Elizabeth Line due to its natty shrouding on the platforms, leaving twelve lines to form a 3x4 grid. And so we begin… King’s Cross, Hammersmith and City line. Nice. While I’m here, Metropolitan and Circle lines too.
It’s around this time that I began to think all the images (and all the trains) looked exactly the same. I was sure they were all different and charming in their way. Never mind, onwards and upwards. Baker Street… Green Park (extra one)… Bank/Monument…
Bank’s little surprise was the Waterloo and City Line being closed at the weekends. That’s been the case since it was built, but I’d forgotten. So let’s try the Elizabeth Line, after all - I’ve never seen it. So…
…Liverpool Street. Nope. I was right. Can’t see the trains. But it was academic at this point since all of the trains were indeed identical except the DLR and I’d just toured the underground purely out of obsessionality. At least there’ll be a grid with which to illustrate this tale of taking it on the chin. A tale of how it’s always worth trying even if life decides it isn’t going to happen.
Except of course it all adds up to eleven thanks to the Waterloo and City line.
So I returned to King’s Cross to catch the return train to Royston.
Which changed to East Croydon at the last second.
EDIT: I saved it!
Open PDI - Sept 21
Judge - Nick Bowman.
An interesting competition to kick off the new season. Nearly everyone not held back recevied 17…! Pretty chuffed to have achieved 1st (HC) and 3rd (HC). Pretty irritated to have set the bar here for the rest of the year…!
Click images for full-size.
The Braes, towards Ben Tianavaig.
Skye II - Day 5 | Gallery
Last day on Skye so off we went in search of Hairy Coos. Not a coo to be seen. So we found seals instead. Ten-a-penny they are. Before that though, we went to the Braes:
Then Dunvegan Castle, named after the day they all decided to start eating meat and dairy,
Settlement
Skye II - Day 4 | Gallery
Dropped my expensive 100-500 L lens onto the rocks today, bending the mount. “But Jim! You haven’t shot above 35mm all week!” That’s right. But I brought it all the way here to drop it on the rocks at Rhu Falls because I’m exciting and unpredictable.
Skye II - Day 3 | Gallery
Rubha nam Brathairean today followed by Quiraing. Pleasantly far less rain and far less wind!
Quiraing
Then on to Neist Point lighthouse before dinner.
Skye II - Day 2 | Gallery
We happened to be in Elgol at the right time for the tide to be able to access Spar Cave. Mid-September makes this a relatively busy place despite it’s somewhat treacherous nature. Beautiful flowstone formations in the cave, but the nicest pictures were to be taken outside of the cave.
…Then a quick potter around Portree for more why-am-I-doing-this handheld one-second-plus shutter noodling.
Skye II - Day 1 | Gallery
To the Fairy Pools (Glumagan nan Sithichean) with a wide lens and an ND filter like a slab of MDF. It suited the weather - especially the brooding clouds clinging to the summits of Sgurr an Fheadain. True to form, I essentially drove for two days to come here, carried a tripod on my back all the way there, and couldn’t be bothered putting it together for these long exposures or the 20-shot focus-stacking 1/2 second images I decided like a mug to shoot hand-held.
