Cardiff Bay Walk and Reviewing the Week 42

The fountains across the road from the Wales Millennium Centre were at the end of our walk along Cardiff Bay barrage.

Click the first thumbnail image below to view the photos from this week’s walk in sequence (plus a couple of extras).

fountains in front of the Wales Millennium Centre

Dockland Buffers – Comparing Colour and Monochrome

Aha! Those objects I couldn’t clearly identify earlier in the week on our walk across Cardiff Bay barrage, are buffers for ships using the docks.

Although I find these scenes interesting and those buffers fascinating, I wondered what they might be like in black and white. It is perhaps best to say b&w rather than monochrome because I deepened the darker areas, strengthened the contrast, added some grain and left no hint of colour in any spectrum.

Cardiff docks

Ship buffers

Cardiff docks

Cardiff docks

 

Colourful Conversing Cardiff Cranes

Walking back along the barrage towards Cardiff, the views of these colourful Cardiff dock cranes were well worth photographing in my opinion. The blue structures with yellow tips become creature-like as they appear to converse with each other in pairs.

Cardiff Cranes

Cardiff Cranes

Walking Across The Bay

We didn’t take the water bus but walked across Cardiff Bay on the barrage instead. The view across the water shows the bronze roof of the Millennium Centre glinting in the sun and the red terracotta ceramic surface of the Pierhead building in front of it.

 

Cardiff Bay water taxi

Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay

Objects In The Sea

I have no idea what these objects in the sea are! I imagine the distant ones are buoys for shipping. I am pretty sure the larger structure also has something to do with shipping but as it is so close to the Cardiff Bay barrage, where we were walking, I am not sure what its purpose is. It has meteorological equipment on it and clearly it is a convenient pirch for birds – other than that all I can say is that I like the composition of uprights, horizontals and perspective in this shot.

This image can also be seen in black and white on Leanne Cole’s Photography blog post Monochrome Madness 2-29.

The second photo includes Flat Holm and Steep Holm islands in there Bristol Channel.

Cardiff Bay

Flat Holm Island

Backdrops

Walking from the modern architecture of Cardiff Bay to the bay’s barrage took us past an area of old docks. The backdrops of the buildings in one case and old painted walls in another, both seen behind that determined urban wildflower, buddleia, were the points of interest for me at this stage of our walk.

Buddleia, urban wildflower

Buddleia, dockland wildflower

old dock wall

old dock steps

Angular Starting Points

The starting point for a recent walk around Cardiff Bay can be seen below in some of the angular architecture of the area. The architecture may be one of the things that Cardiff Bay is known for but my walk this week, which took us across the barrage, will be taking an alternative look at the area and some of the features that caught my attention.

The materials of the building in the background of the second photo prove it to be the same one as is in the first shot. You may be able to tell that the first image was taken at a different time to the second as is shown by the change in weather. It’s the bird I particularly like in this photo, and the red triangle of the footbridge in the second one, or perhaps I should say the context of these elements of the images.

Cardiff Bay-16

Cardiff Bay architecture

Fountain in the Old Docks

Cardiff Bay as it is now, is so different to what it was when we first moved to Wales in 1983. It was later in the ’80s that the development began – I wish I had taken photographs back then. There are plenty images to be seen in the galleries (past and present) on the bay website along with the history of the development, but they are not mine and I cannot compare them to the photos I take of the place nowadays.

The fountain in the image below is set into one of the old dock walls.

Fountain