Distant dwellings

Distant Horizon – Reviewing the Walk

In reviewing my walk this week I can see that I have posted another set of very dark images – it must be the time of year! The selected photos from my posts about this walk illustrate both the urban start in a multi-story carpark and the approaching light of dawn on the horizon in a windy Swansea Bay.

Distant horizon

The soundscape for this week backs up the images as always but while it includes the sound of crashing waves towards the end, it does not include the noise pollution of street cleaners and leaf blowers being used at 6 AM. Continue reading

Christmas decorations

Christmas Lights and Lights at Christmas

My walk this week, being in an early morning urban landscape, remained dark almost to the end of the walk. Some of the Christmas lights of Swansea were to be seen creating abstract growth patterns against the night sky, but there were more abstract patterns than this to be seen in the lighting at this early hour.

Christmas lighting

Some long exposure and movement of the lens allowed the traffic to create light trails en route to daytime and the darkness in other areasContinue reading

Urban Dawn Walk

My Walk this Week – Early Bird

My walk this weeks starts in a multi-storey carpark in town. By early I mean about 5.55 am, which is why I was surprised that the first sound I heard on getting out of my car in this empty urban space was an early bird chirruping away! It was still dark and I was in an environment as far from natural as possible.

Multi-storey

It was interesting to experience the ambience and light (or lack of it) in this structure in its unusual empty state and I was able to check out the patterns revealed in the gloom. The background soundContinue reading

Water at The Waterside

My Walk this Week – Water at The Waterside

My walk this week is somewhere I visit regularly. The first Friday of the month I go to The Waterside, Felindre where Sue and Steve Heatherington welcome all who come along for creative conversation. Sue has also been posting about water in the valley this past week at Sue Waterside!

Waterside Details-5

You never know who you are going to meet but there are often faces I have become familiar with over the last couple of years. The conversation is often philosophical but also casual and so it is easy to talk. The place itself helps to prompt this and alongside Sue and Steve’s hospitality and their entertaining alpacas (yes, that’s right, alpacas!), this secluded Welsh valley is a fantastic place, whatever the weather, to clear the mind, explore and develop new thoughts and ideas and take a contemplative walk around the lake.Continue reading

My Walk this Week – Hints of Spring

The photos for my walk this week span a few days. I took the same walk each morning for four days and was partly inspired by the first hint of Spring – i.e. sunshine!

It’s another short local hill walk. The hill is fairly small, but steep and rises to about 450 feet. At the bottom my route followed that of the local river with snow drops lining its banks. I was tempted to stop and take some (rare for me) slow exposure shots of the water falling over the weir.

I didn’t have my tripod with me and so most of the shots were discarded. However, there were a few I liked including the underexposed one taken with a faster shutter speed and which shows the patterns and textures in the falling water.

Snow Drops

Slow Shutter Effects – iPhonography

My day to day photography is often done using my iPhone and lately I have been experimenting with one or two different camera apps. The set of images below were taken using Slow Shutter Cam which, if you can be sure to keep the phone steady is nifty little app.

Fountains

The problem with long exposures being used to achieve that misty / ghostly effect or smoothness in flowing water, is that everything else gets the same length of exposure. There are various ways of dealing with this but the Slow Shutter app simply uses thevideo setting on the phone camera rather than the stills setting. It is, however, a still image that is saved.

It is a clever answer to the exposure issue and there are options to take images up to the full resolution of the camera (8 megapixels). I have had a few issues with the handling of colour which can be seen above but I suspect this is something that I will be able to manage better with time and practice. These images have had some post production adjustments applied but the main issue in taking them was that I did not have a tripod with me and had to rely on keeping the camera steady with the aid of the railings round the fountains.

The fountains are in the centre of Middlesbrough in the NE of England which is, according to some, one of the ugliest towns in Britain – I disagree and suggest they take another look, this time with their eyes open and no prejudicial blinkers!