Mobile
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Gorgeous Gower always delivers
A week or so back I took a trip to Gower in South Wales. It’s a fantastic place, with very varied landscape and lots of wildlife. I took one of my OM bodies and a couple of lenses, but never used them. All these images were shot on my Google Pixel phone and edited in Snapseed. Rhosilli beach is a favourite place; it’s been voted as one of the best beaches in the world. I spotted a cool bit of driftwood and got low down and close to it. The wide aperture of my Pixel’s lens meant that only one bit of the foreground wood was in focus. The B&W…
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March miscellany
Recently I travelled to Jersey for a few days to judge the photography section of the annual Jersey Arts and Crafts Eisteddfod. It was an honour to be chosen as Adjudicator, and I was well looked after by the organisers. I was kept very busy writing individual assessments for each image, so I didn’t have much chance to see the sights. I was able to pop out early one morning and visit the harbour in St Helier. One striking thing was the sculpture called “Jersey Girl” at Liberty Wharf. It’s by an artist called Rowan Gillespie, and was unveiled in 2010. Very cleverly she is suspended by cables from just…
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Pixel-lated water
Like most people these days, the camera I carry about with me all the time is the camera that’s part of my mobile phone. I’ve got a Google Pixel mobile, and it’s got an excellent camera and camera software. One feature I like is the Long Exposure mode. It’s not as good for long exposure as my Huawei Mate phone was, with its fabulous “Silky Water” mode, but within its limits it gives great results. The trick is to keep the dot inside the circle! That tells you you’ve kept the camera still enough. These three images of moving water were taken using Long Exposure mode. I rested my hand…
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Tripping the Light Fantastic in Worcester.
One of the things that’s great about living in Worcester is the active arts scene. It sometimes manifests itself as “Light Nights” events, where there are various art installations all to do with light. Recently there was one called “Bridges of Light”. Whilst not as extensive as other “Light Nights” it was still fun. One installation used three very bright single colour projectors; red, green and blue, to throw multi-coloured shadows of folks in front of them. Some times people danced, so here’s a multi-coloured twirl. One installation inside a church consisted of a large rotating drum with cut-outs of stars and cut-out wording. Using my phone camera on “Long…
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A midweek miscellany
Today’s post does not have a single theme. It’s a mixture of images, each of which has its own story to tell, each of which shows an area of my photographic interest. Here’s a shot from a town’s bonfire night celebrations last year. They had fire-eaters as a diversion before the main fireworks event. It was hard to get into a good place to have a clear view of the fire-eater, and also hard to choose the right moment to press the shutter. I was pleased with the flame on this one. A nice tight crop to the corner and editing out some background distractions made the composition work better.…
- Abstract, Architecture, Black & White, Bokeh, Composition, Creative Photography, Fine Art, ICM, Landscape, Macro, Mobile, Movement, Snapseed
Worcestershire Open Studios is nearly here!
The final preparation for this weekend’s opening of my exhibition as part of Worcestershire Open Studios (WoS) is pretty well done! Images are up, lights are installed and tested, mounted prints are in their display boxes, greetings cards are sorted, and signage is all done. Even the sun is getting in on the act and saying, “Here’s where you need to come to”! If you follow the directions that are found here, you should see a house like this one – only the right way up! There will be signs and green bunting to help you find it. This one of the key images in my exhibition. If you want…
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Hay unstacked
Yesterday afternoon I had a wander round Hay-on-Wye prior to giving my “Close-up and Macro Photography” talk to the local camera club. Hay is a very attractive town, and has the world-famous Hay Festival every year. Hay is well worth a visit. Being me, I was on the lookout for the curious corners and quirky bits, rather than the tourist views. Here’s a bunch of those fairly useless stirring sticks you get at some coffee places. They were just lying on the pavement. I thought the found arrangement had a sort of Zen look to it. A quick edit in Snapseed to boost the contrast and edit out a couple…
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Happy Christmas!
As it’s less than a couple of weeks till Xmas Day I thought I would take the opportunity to wish you all a “Merry Christmas and a Phabulously Photographic New Year”. It’s been an interesting year for me, with lots of in-person and Zoom talks and well-received Macro workshops. I’ve already got talk bookings for 2026! This is a macro bokeh shot of an Xmas tree bauble. Not only is there foreground bokeh but there’s also wider background bokeh. It’s like differential focus, but it’s all actually out of focus! Our neighbour over the road has a log-burning stove. One quite windy day it was smoking quite a lot, and…
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Pick up a penguin.
There is a sculpture trail in Worcester at present. It’s called the “Worcester Waddle” and consists of lots of penguins that have been painted in imaginative ways. It’s to raise money for St. Richard’s Hospice, and there will be an auction of the penguins later in the year. The auction of the previous sculptures, of elephants, raised a lot of money. One went for £36,000! One of the penguins represents a tourist, and it has a camera painted on it. Being a photographer I had to record the camera. I know that’s a bit meta, but there we go. It’s interesting seeing the juxtaposition of the penguins and the people…
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Textures of Gower
Just had a week down in wonderful Gower, South Wales. It’s got fabulous coastal scenery, wildlife*, and a really wide range of habitats. Being me, as well as enjoying those things I was on the look out for textures and patterns; I found some too. The bus to Rhossili from Swansea has a turning area near the church. It couldn’t really go much further without driving into the sea. There’s a bus shelter there and someone, or something, must have hit the roof of it quite hard as the reinforced glass was shattered. There was a fab pattern of random cracks overlaying the internal wires. A quick move to…