Winged Angel on a Bridge, redux
Here is the promised rework of yesterday’s “Winged Angel on a Bridge”. Just a little tweaking of contrasts and whites.
Keyboard demons and a winged angel on a bridge
It’s been – again – a long few weeks, with not much time for photography at all. There are probably around 50 photos just sitting in my LX3′s card, which have been there for a good two weeks at least, and my 1100D must be feeling pretty neglected – I can’t remember the last time I took it out. I don’t even know if there are any photos to develop in its card at all. It’s just a phase, of course. Work has taken over big time, and the only way out of a PhD is to work harder. The other half of Oblique Exposure knows this all too well, and so do I.
The other reason why everything is a bit slow has to do with my workflow. I’m converting to Lightroom, after more than a year of jumping between RAWTherapee, Canon Digital Photo Professional and SilkyPix, and there is an inherent cost, in terms of time and energy, to doing so – so bear with me while I try to figure out what it does.
Here is my very first conversion in Lightroom. It is one of the angels on the Roman Bridge of Cordoba. Funny enough, this is one of the shots that actually turned out just as I envisioned it at the time; it was shot at night, using the Sigma 30mm wide open (f/1.4) and ISO800, using only the light of the candles burning underneath for illumination.
I might revisit this photo in the future to bump up the contrast and highlights a bit; right now I’m pretty happy with it.
Highwire act
So, Cambridge city centre on a Saturday morning: Britain’s Got Balance.
This guy was really very good.
London: Saint Paul’s Cathedral from the Millennium Bridge
A difficult shot, this one: balancing out the strong highlights in the sky and the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral with the shade under the Millennium Bridge. Not an easy task in any situation, but especially on a pocket camera. Good job it’s a good one – my trusty Panasonic LX-3.
Modern life blues
Modern life can really wear you down. Sometimes I even feel like I’m losing my head.
Kinda reminds me of this:
More British Springs
There are few things that the British (the English, at least) enjoy more than talking about than the weather*. And with good reason too: the meteorological phenomena in these Isles are notorious for being grim. Here’s Cambridge, a few weeks ago:
“Yeah, I think it’s raining down there as well”.
That, by the way, is Campkins, a really neat camera shop in downtown Cambridge. Plenty of tasty and tempting second hand film stuff, including a load of rangefinders (they have a counter just for old Leicas) and some medium formats (Rolleiflex anyone?), as well as a decent range some modern stuff. Leave your credit card at home, or cross that blue door at your own peril…
And London? All the rain and hail almost ruined these young ladies’ selfie.
Roll on Summer. Maybe it’ll get better – the rain is usually warmer, at least.
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*Although football might well be a close second.
British Spring
We endured all sorts of weather in London last week: sun, rain, hail (!), sun again. And that was only during the first few hours of the afternoon…
The Bridge of Sighs
I’ve got very behind with my blog posts this week. I’ve taken lots of photographs of Cambridge but haven’t had time to sort through them. But for today at least I leave you with an iconic view of Cambridge – the Bridge of Sighs – which is linked to St. Johns college.
Punting in the Cam: under the bridges
One of the attractions of going for a punt in the river Cam is going under the bridges. The punt traffic can be quite intense, giving a lot of photo opportunities. Street photography with a twist, if you like.
I like to convert this kind of photo to monochrome, to highlight the light/shade contrast and the textures. Both shots taken with the Canon 1100D, 18-55mm kit lens, and converted to black and white on GIMP 2 using layers.
Industrial Manchester: details of a disused factory chimney
Even as former factories and mills get converted into homes, the buildings tend to maintain their look and identities. One of the nicest features you can have in your nice new flat in a honking old industrial chimney!
Sadly I never got to photograph the best example of conversion of them all – an old church converted to offices and flats, but keeping the exterior untouched. It even has stained glass…
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Oblique Exposure by Carlos Ferreira and Jennifer Watts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
