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Worcester Balloon Festival in three styles
Last weekend was the Worcester Balloon Festival. I took a wander down to the site to see what was happening. I had my Huawei Mate phone camera and my Olympus E-M10 Mk3 with me. I decided to try and show different treatments of subjects at the Festival. There was a very large inflatable slide there. I went in the early evening and the sun was getting quite low on the horizon. It was picking out the structure of the slide with a golden colour, and that gave a lovely contrast against the blue sky. It has to look of a modern office building about it to my mind. Later on…
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It’s all about the light direction.
When you see a potential photographic subject it’s worth looking all round it to see how it’s affected by the changed in light direction. It can make a huge difference. Take this large dandelion sculpture in a fabulous Gloucestershire garden. I chose a viewpoint where it was lit by the sun from directly behind. It gave a lovely silhouetted contrast to the seed head “parachutes”. I had only just found it, and would have preferred to have been there an hour or so before, so that I could have got the edge of the seed heads away from the background trees on the right-hand side. I was just leaving another…
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May miscellany
No real theme this time, though you could argue it’s a people picture sequence that goes; close-up, full length, multiple figures. The close-up is of a person’s eye shot with my super useful Bauhn clip-on mobile phone macro lens. The lens has a built-in ring light, so it’s great for adding light to areas when the phone shadows the available light. I like the reflection of their eyelashes in their cornea. This is a bit of street photography in the delightful Pitville, a part of Cheltenham. This Barbie mural on the side of a building in Pitville Park, was really long. It’s a bit of an odd subject, as it’s…
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Spring has sprung
Spring has most definitely sprung here in Worcester, notwithstanding all the rain we’ve had. One thing that’s happened locally is that the Cathedral has restarted tower visits after a four year hiatus. I was the first person to book a tower visit ticket and it’s well worth doing. On the way back down the tower I noticed an overwintered Peacock butterfly that was next to an unopenable window. The butterfly had no chance of getting out without help, so I picked it up between my index finger and thumb and took it carefully down the stairs, through the nave and out into the open. After a minute or so on…
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Signs of the previous Leap Year.
OK, so 2020 was the previous leap year, and we all know what started happening then. Those days though are already starting to seem like another world; one with real restrictions and real fear. One thing that happened in the UK during the Covid epidemic and lockdown was the sudden proliferation of signs telling us how we should behave. Lots of those have completely gone now, and I think it’s important that the traces of those remaining are recorded. To that end I am making sure I photograph Covid signs whenever I come across them. This is on a bus shelter in Ledbury, Herefordshire. It’s a plastic film telling us…
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Up & Down or Side to Side?
In my “Movement in Photography” talk I mention the difference it makes to an ICM image if you move the camera in one direction, compared to moving it at right angles to that direction. Information at right angles to the direction of camera movement tends to get spread out, whereas information in the direction of camera movement is accentuated. Take these tree images as an example: In this first image I have moved the camera, (my mobile phone – 2 second exposure), in generally the same direction as the tree trunks. Although there is a bit of horizontal information, most of the image is of near-vertical shapes and textures. In…
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Autumn Acer Abstracts
Recently I went to the fabulous Autumn Garden at Queenswood Country Park near Hereford. One feature of that part of the wood is the Japanese Maples. They were in full colour and looked fantastic. It was a sunshine and showers day, so there were lots of water droplets around. I had my Olympus macro lens on, so set my camera to manual focus and defocussed the image. I concentrated on a small part of a maple that had dissected leaves. The shapes and colours of the leaves, and the water droplet highlights, made for a very pleasing abstract composition. I had my trusty Huawei mobile with me and couldn’t resist…
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Just look around you.
As we move into the darker and colder days of winter it’s easy to fall into bad habits and stop looking for images, or say, “It’s all a bit grey, so I’ll leave my camera at home”! Remember though, even if you don’t go out much, there are still loads of photographic subjects, some even right at your feet. One birthday gift I had was a fabulous cheese selection with vintage port and an olive wood cheese board. The wood looks to have been “spalted”. That’s where it’s been attacked by fungi and developed fascinating patterns in the grain. I looked closely at the wood and found areas that resembled…
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It’s getting closer…
Blimey, it’s getting awfully close to Christmas again! One thing I did a couple of Christmases ago was to go to the Worcester Cathedral Christmas Tree Festival. There were loads of decorated trees in the Cathedral cloister. Some were from schools, some from charities and some from commercial organisations. Most were fab! Here I’ve used my mobile’s Silky Water mode, (yes, again!), and walked as fast as I could down the cloister. I had to wait till there weren’t too many people. I like the combination of warm orangey lights and cooler blue lights. This is rather closer to home; well, it’s actually at home. We had some Xmas lights…
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There’s a storm a brewin’…
We recently had a one week holiday down in lovely Cornwall. As our plan was to do as much coastal walking as possible, it was somewhat weather dependent. Luckily, all except one day was pretty good, and a few days were marvellous. The bad day was the day of Storm Agnes. For a few hours in the afternoon all manner of wild wind and rain happened. Going across the River Fal on the King Harry ferry was entertaining. While the storm was developing the sky began to look very ominous. It was clear that there was a lot of air movement. It was fascinating to watch. I took a shot…