A Mumbled Question

The May Day bank holiday weekend saw us driving round England and Wales. Starting on the Thursday evening with Swansea to drop off son and heir, then up to Manchester for a family wedding, on to Liverpool to check on my father's house and back to Swansea by the end of the Saturday.

Sunday morning found us on the beach at the Mumbles, collecting shells. It's not really a picturesque environment, despite it's reputation, and a light haze meant that my attempts to photograph the landscape came to nothing. However, I did make this image of an O ring which I found somewhere near the jetty.

Having carted several handfuls of shells back to the car, we went off to Joe's Ice Cream parlour via the crazy golf course then back to Swansea for lunch. By the end of the day, we'd made it back to Somerset.

Seed 'ed

Another image from the spring garden, although this one is of a head that's already shed its seeds. I wish I could tell you what sort of plant this is, but I don't know its name. Its a low bush with long stems and large, fury green flowers. 

No, me neither.

Tulip Three

Another image from the tulip session as promised in my previous post. Not as symmetrical as the previous image, not as pleasing in its formality, but I like the detailing on the petals. And the shape does lend itself to the square format, and the square format lends itself to images of flowers.

Et Tu Lip, Two

This is more like it. I spent so much time mucking about with the previous image that the tulips had actually bloomed by the time that I posted it. And so here is the actual flower.

This works as a monochrome image, I think, unlike the previous one and for reasons that I don't quite understand. I did make a right pils of the white balance when capturing this image - thank God for UFRaw. Despite all the opprobrium that I've heaped on the heads of the developers, I'd have been stuck without it on this occasion.

Anyway, when you're on a roll and all that - I have at least one more decent image for this session, which I'll post soon.

Et Tu, Lip

I generally don't spend that much time working on the images that I post - you may, or may not find that surprising. However, I spent what seems like endless amounts of time over several evenings mucking about with this one.

This is probably because the initial idea that I had for this image didn't work, for reasons that I'm not entirely clear on. The intention was that it would be a monochrome image set against a dark background, a la Edward Weston. 

Anyway, I created the layer mask - which took an age and I ended up painting the thing, which I try to avoid - did the conversion and fiddled with Curves, but I just couldn't make it work. So, I sampled the image to produce the background colour, pushed the saturation a bit, here we are.

I should say that the photograph was taken mid afternoon in our garden against a white background. I suspect that this is the problem - what the image really needs is raking light to boost the contrast and define the texture of the flower better. Still, we live and learn, I suppose.

Somerset Skyline

I've been trying to photograph trees for a while now, with little success. This is frustrating because I find trees to be the most sculptural elements in the landscape. However, this continued failure may result from the very strong sense that I have of the image that I want to make, and it's entirely possible that the reality of such an image is less prepossessing than I imagine. In fact, the evidence is starting to point in that direction.

So, what is this image that I'm trying to make? Well, I think that the best way to to describe it is to outline the rules that it has to conform to.

Firstly, the photograph must be of trees on the horizon, with only sky for background. In Somerset, this is harder than it sounds. When I first started trying to make landscape images, I was obsessed with removing every sign of human habitation and it was only at that point that I realised just how cluttered the skyline round here is. Currently, there's a local pressure group campaigning against the building of new electricity pylons on aesthetic grounds. They obviously haven't spent much time trying to find somewhere were you can't see the existing ones.

Secondly, whilst the tree can be - slightly - in front of the horizon, it mustn't be behind it i.e. the while tree, from base to top, must be visible and form part of the image.

Another consideration is that bare branches look better than ones with foliage, so the image has to be made during winter, or the tree needs to be dead. A late Spring helps, also.


The image above was made a couple of weeks ago. I'd spotted this pair of trees on my way to work, passing over the Mendips, so one morning I stopped. In retrospect, I should have left it until the afternoon as I don't like the backlighting - I'd prefer more detail in the subject and foreground. Still, this is the best that I've managed so far and it will have to do for now. I expect that I'll return to the subject at some point in the near future.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Bit of a stop-gap, this one. The spring flowers, including the daffs, are over now. This image was taken a couple of weeks ago in our garden in Somerset. I'm not even sure what sort of flower it is, but the brilliant blue attracted me.

I was back out there this weekend as we've some tulips that are coming up and I had a weekend off from Liverpool and the in-laws. But I haven't processed the results of that session, in fact they're still on the camera. Life in the fast lane and all that...