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Reflections on a trip to Birmingham
Living in Worcester means I am not too far from Birmingham. It’s just half an hour on the train from Worcestershire Parkway to Birmingham New Street. That station has a lot of glass panels all over it, and they make for a useful source of reflection images. I was lucky enough to be there on a cloudless day with lots of sunshine. The colours of the surrounding buildings against the blue of the sky were fabulous. Isolating just a small section of the reflection made the image into an almost painterly abstract. Above one of the entrances there’s another lot of glass panels, and the sunshine gave strong shadows. The…
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Pylon the pressure
On a walk with a friend on a lovely sunny day we came across a large electricity pylon. The appearance of pylons divides people, but whether you like them or not it’s worth looking up and seeing if there are any images to be found. The sun was shining through the glass insulators on the pylon. I used a couple of stops of negative Exposure Compensation to try and keep the highlight detail in the insulators, and this had the bonus effect of darkening the very blue sky. It was worth waiting till a small cloud had moved away so it was a plain blue background. Sidebar: there is a…
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Same subject, different views.
On a trip to Pembrokeshire one landscape feature really stood out. It was the Valero oil refinery at Pembroke. It was tempting, in a landscape that has fabulous coastal scenery, to ignore it as a photographic subject, but it’s such a prominent feature it’s worth a closer look. Looking at it from the Angle peninsular the refinery stood out against a cloudy sky. It had nice directional lighting from the right hand top side. I isolated it using a 150mm telephoto lens, which has added some perpective compression. A bit of HDR treatment and a B&W conversion gave a moody look. From the summit of the highest point in the…
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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…
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A 21st century icon
At a recent trip to Shelsley Walsh for a motorsport hill climb event, I was struck by this marshall’s face against the red circle. The marshalls, all volunteers, do fantastic work making sure the event is safe for all the competitors and for the spectators. He was relaxing for a moment while the hill was cleared to remove a car that had broken down. With his head against that red circle I thought he looked like one of those icons from medieval or Orthodox Christian art. I just loved his contemplative expression, so I used my telephoto lens to isolate him. This was what I thought he looked like; uncanny…
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Up close and personal in Sicily
I recently went to the sunny island of Sicily. Whilst we were there trying to tolerate roasting temperatures of 28C the UK was shivering with just 30C. I took my trusty Olympus macro lens of course, and it was very useful. One of the insects we wanted to see on the trip was the Violet Carpenter Bee. These are pretty chunky things and not only did we see one, but I got close enough to photograph it. It was covered in pollen from other flowers, which gave it a lovely golden sheen. When it flew off right past my ear it was very noisy! Another impressive insect was the Asian…
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Always looking for odd collections
When I’m out and about I’m always looking for incongruous or odd collections of things, or things that make a visual joke. It does slow down a walk though, but that can be useful sometimes. One recent useful time was this Sicilian answer to IKEA flat-pack furniture. I saw it in the beautiful town of Modica, near a viewpoint. It was very hot, so slowing down was a good idea. I loved the use of the food waste “umido” bin to act as a support for the planks. I reckon it’s made a two-seat bench, so why not just sit on the food bin and the chair instead? At a…
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The word’s on the street
When I am away on holiday, as well as taking in the views, it’s great to observe people going about their daily business. They can be locals or other visitors. If you are in a busy location it’s quite easy to take your shots without anyone noticing. Sometimes you get lucky and see something a bit unusual. Outside the MAAT museum in Lisbon there was a bride and groom being photographed. As an ex-wedding photographer I was interested in what was going on. Imagine my surprise to see a cyclist coming towards them with her camera out. I only had time for one shot before she was gone. Late one…