I am still working on my review of the Fuji X-E1. In the meantime, here’s a shot from 2009 of sunrise over the pond at Seahouses in Northumberland. This was perhaps the beginning of me taking landscape photography seriously, well seriously enough to get up at dawn, which is pretty early in this country in July! Taken using my first DSLR, the Canon D400, plus kit lens.
I thought I’d share some images of the college where I am currently studying. The Royal Holloway is a college of the University of London, but based a little outside London itself, in leafy Egham.
The main building, known as ‘Founders’, was designed by William Henry Crossland for Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist Thomas Holloway as a women’s college. It became part of the University of London in 1900 and accepted its first male students in 1945.
The magnificent Victorian building seems a very fitting background for my particular degree, a Masters in Victorian Literature and Art. I am in the final stages now, with just my dissertation to go.
I have for some time now been promising a review of my latest acquisition, the Fuji X-E1, to follow up on my review in January of the Sony NEX-7. I hope to write it this weekend so if you are thinking of investing in a mirror-less camera, watch this space.
This image was captured in the Ghetto of Venice, an sequestered spot within the city that allows the visitor to escape the crowds thronging the main pathways and alleys. It is an atmospheric place and, of course, has an interesting history, which I will soon explore in another post. Until then, I leave you with Shylock’s famous speech from The Merchant of Venice:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means,
warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene i.
Last summer Focused Moments was speckled with posts featuring the speckled bush crickets (leptophyes punctatissima) in my garden. With our very late spring here I hadn’t seen any until this weekend. But never fear, they are back! Here an early instar stares me down from between two new camellia leaves.
Some of last year’s specky posts are here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
This is my favourite shot from my recent forays into street photography. Something about his expression. And the light.
Well, I know it is a little unkind to my gardening friends but I had to share this picture of a greenfly and its progeny. Purely in the interests of enjoying their colour against the tulip, of course. Come on, admit it, the babies are just a tiny bit cute?
The coffee bar conversation
Last month I enjoyed putting my new street pal, the Fuji X-E1, through its paces during a lunchtime stroll around Belgravia.
Iconic
Street photography is a very different genre from my usual fare, but I am enjoying dabbling in it.
In the Arcade
I love it that with the X-E1 I can snap away without people noticing. I am even beginning to shoot from the hip, and sometimes I get a passable shot that way.
Lunch with the boys
I love the contrasts you get in London, like working lads taking a lunch break under a designer advert with a distinctly effete-looking model.
Put That Phone Away!
Perhaps it helps with the stealth shooting that everyone is too busy looking at his/her phone to notice me!
Wexting or Telking?
Finally, some Summer weather. The damselflies made the most of it – there were several pairs of these red damselflies mating in my garden yesterday.
I had a bit of fun putting some of my Burano shots together to make this image. I love that place.
A shot from last year of a rosemary beetle. These relatively recent arrivals in the UK may be pretty but they wreak havoc in the garden, especially the herb border. One shouldn’t anthropomorphise but I can’t help interpreting this one’s expression as more belligerent than guilty. Perhaps it is thinking of Princess Anne’s famous riposte:
You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand.
Focused Moments 