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 might share another shot from our recent trip to Venice. This was taken from nearly the same spot, on the same day, as my earlier post, but in very different light. This one was taken at dawn, the other was taken at dusk.
On Friday I visited Bournemouth and travelled there by train. I snapped a couple of shots of Southampton’s industrial area as we rolled by. James Corner, over at Country Corners, recently posted some photos of an industrial view near his home. He reminded me that a photographer should not automatically ignore the less ‘pretty’ landscapes. A more subtle, panoramic shot below.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti famously wrote that ‘a sonnet is a moment’s monument’ (‘Introductory Sonnet’). The same could also be said, of course, of a photograph. (Hopefully I can get away with using Rossetti as my segue to this image as I am currently studying for an MA in Victorian Art and Literature!) This photograph was taken on my honeymoon in 1993. It is the sun rising over Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Looking at it, I can recall the sounds of the African bush waking up, the slightest of breezes on my face, the feeling of warmth slowly returning after the chill of the night, and the anticipation at the start of my first Zimbabwe safari. A special memory, made even more special perhaps by the sad events in Zimbabwe since. All I have is a 6×4 print, having lost the negative. So the scan is inevitably grainy, the resolution too low to make a new print, but just about good enough to give the moment it records a new life on the net.
Focused Moments 