f2.8, 1/640, ISO 100, 100mm
f.13, 1/80, ISO 400, 100mm
The Dragon-fly
Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.
-Tennyson
f7.1, 1/140, ISO 640, 35mm
Central Park from the ‘Top of the Rock’
View downtown from the ‘Top of the Rock’
Balloons over Manhattan
Moongazing buildings
37mm, f7.1, 1/20, ISO800
27mm, f9, 1/9, ISO 800
31mm, f5.6, 1/13, ISO 800
Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles.
-Robert Browning, ‘Love among the Ruins’ (1855)
Lyme Regis, on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, is one of my favourite towns. One morning in August last year I left my family enjoying the sandy beach and went hunting for images. I have shared some of my larger compositions in earlier posts, but I also snapped up some details, trying to capture some of the textures of the harbour.
Can you see a face?
16mm, f22, 1/3, ISO 100
Mostly I go for a naturalistic approach but sometimes it’s fun to play around with black and white, and a little bit of colour. Kimmeridge Bay is on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. It is best known as a ‘honeypot’ location for spectacular sunset and sunrise shots. But what can you do when the weather doesn’t co-operate? Give it up as a bad job or try for something a little more creative? Some of my other images from this shoot are here, here and here.
100mm , f13, 1/200, ISO 800
This bizarre creature is a lace bug, probably stephanitis rhododendri, which is bad news for the rhododendrons and azaleas in my garden. Or it might be stephanitis takeyai, which is bad news for the pieris in my garden. So it is bad news for me as a gardener either way! I don’t know why it was posing in my sumac tree instead of one of its preferred meals, but I thought the colours worked rather nicely.
27mm, f8, three bracketed exposures at 10, 20 and 30 seconds, ISO 400. Circ. polariser, tripod, remote shutter release.
I went out to shoot the sunset but the moon took over.
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a photographer, Jenifer Bunnett, based in Surrey who had found me on the internet and suggested we might go out on photo safaris together. We met up for a coffee and a chat and found we hit it off. Jen is a super photographer whose interests are similar to mine. On Tuesday we had our first adventure together. I have already posted my shots of fungi from the woods around Friday Street in the Surrey Hills. However, our main quarry was this waterfall, something Jenifer had read about but hadn’t yet found. It seemed to be something of a secret, mentioned mysteriously on the internet but without directions. It turned out, to my surprise, that I had been there, several years ago, on a family hike. Surrey isn’t known for its waterfalls, but this one is pretty and tranquil – we had it to ourselves. Although most of the trees around it are laurel, and so evergreen, we did notice a few birches so a return visit in a couple of weeks is very much on the cards.
If you are interested, do visit Jen’s website and/or her Facebook page.
Focused Moments 