Garden Reflections

Another image from the Bishop's Palace visit a few weeks ago, made in the Garden of Reflection.

The Tulip Touch

A visit to the Bishop's Palace in Wells on Good Friday resulted in this image.

Praying Mantis

A final image from the Wells Cathedral set.

Cathedral Green II

Another image from the Wells Cathedral set. I think I prefer this one - it has better depth of field control than my previous post - but there are some problems with the composition.

Cathedral Green

Another summer outing - this time we spent an afternoon at Wells Cathedral, taking in their Mediaeval Fair - which wasn't as good as last year's, to be honest. In an attempt to rescue the situation, I managed to spend a few minutes photographing in the gardens.

Window Shopping

This is probably the final image from our outing to the Bishop's Palace, which shows the cathedral framed through one of the windows of the ruined great hall. 

Episcopal Purple

During our recent visit to the Bishop's Palace, we spent some time in the gardens where I made this image of a flower of some sort or other.

Cathedral City

Another image made during the recent medieval day, this time of the Cathedral. The place was snewwing with people, but you wouldn't know it from this shot.

The Western Front

An image of the West Front of Wells Cathedral. And I know that the sky looks fake - because it is, of course, but I'm rather proud of the masking. 

This is the last of this set that I'll post - back to Shapwick next time.

Apostolic

This is an image of a statue of an Apostle - I can't remember which - one of four which stand outside the North Porch of Wells Cathedral.

Cathedral Grey

I'm learning to swim. 

No, really.

Every Friday afternoon for the past few months, I've been making my way from work to Wells Leisure Centre, where a very patient and encouraging instructor has been moving me forwards in baby steps to the point were I can propel myself through the water, after a fashion.

One consequence is that I often have a few minutes to kill in or around Wells before my lesson, and a couple of weeks ago I decided to use this time for photography.The Cathedral presented itself as an obvious subject, and I made a couple of decent images - this one is of the interior of the North Porch. I'm sure these architectural features have a name and are very fine examples of the type, however I just liked the way the light fell.

Cameraphone Capers

Wells Cathedral, 7th April 2012

Several months ago, I was agonising about buying a compact camera. I tend to find that a DSLR is just too big, noisy and downright intrusive in certain situations, so I was seriously considering the purchase of something more discrete. However, I'm really attached to using a viewfinder, which very few compacts have. And to add to my indecision, I was tempted by the various mirrorless systems that are around at the moment, especially the Olympus Pen.

[Despite the fact that my all DSLRs are Sony, I didn't like the look of the NEX system cameras, which shows you just how much of a fashion victim I can be when it comes to technology. To be fair, if Sony had decided to use the A-mount on its NEX cameras, that might have swung things back in their favour with me. However, I'm sure that there are good, technical reasons for going with E-mount. But I digress.]

Anyway, when I changed jobs recently, I had to return my company mobile phone. So, after many years of pay-and-go making do and a few years without any phone of my own, I went out and bought a contract. Again, I used my heart rather than my head when making a purchasing decision and came back with a Nokia Lumia 800.

The Lumia has a fairly decent 8 mega-pixel camera built in and I've found myself using it quite a lot for happy snaps of my family. Controls are limited and the shutter lag is horrendous, but it does the job and I always have it with me. It has, in fact, filled the need that was driving me to consider a compact camera. I've tried presenting this to my wife as an overall cost saving, but I don't think she's convinced.

Over the Easter holiday, we went to the Bishop's Palace in Wells and I managed to leave my camera bag at home. Wandering about after our son, who was absorbed in the Easter egg hunt, it occurred to me to try my camera phone on other subjects. Whilst he was busy with the dragon's nest in the orchard, I made the image above.

I'm not going to pretend that this is how it came off the phone. I colourised the image and adjusted the brightness of the sky in GIMP. But the phone made a good job of the exposure without any help from me. The finished result isn't the best photo I've ever made, but I find it quite pleasing.

This tends to support the hypothesis that the compact camera market will be eroded by camera phones until, in a few years time, we will be left with a three tier market: camera phones at the low end; mirrorless systems in the mid range; and full frame DSLRs and medium format at the top end.

Actually, my view is that the DSLR is a dead end in design terms which will be obsolete in a few years time, but that's a subject for another post.