Black and White

Sofia

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The first post for 2021, with some images taken on a recent work trip to Bulgaria. Street and social-documentary photography has been badly curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in Barcelona there are heavy restrictions on all forms of movement, with both a curfew and limitations how far it is possible to move. Added to this is the expectation of social distancing, which makes conventional street photography with a wide-angle lens and close proximity with people problematic. Street photography is invariably something that feels risky, but with a highly contagious […]

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Black and White

Snapshots from Berlin

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A set of tourist snapshots captured while on a short trip to Berlin. It is a fascinating city with a rich, complex and often tragic history, and it would be interesting to have time to undertake a more in depth photographic project there. All images shot with the Leica M10 and 50mm Summilux. I did take a wide-angle lens as well, but never used it because 50mm always just seems right.

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Film

Italy: Wide and Normal

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A short selection of images taken while visiting friends and family in Italy over New Year. For some unknown reason, these were all taken using older Zenit film cameras. The first set were shot with the Horizon 202 panoramic camera – a camera that begs to be used but which still needs more time to figure out how to get the most interesting results (compare, for example, the images with massive distortion vs those that look entirely undistorted – the result of simply tilting the camera a few degrees and […]

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Landscape

Come Walk With Me…

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A short set of images taken around the piers in Brighton, during a rather stormy period. I have been meaning to try to take some pictures of the old piers for some time, although the original intention of making some long exposure sea-scapes was largely thwarted thanks to a slight aversion to the gale-force winds that were seemingly laced with sleet for much of the time…  

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Black and White

Dolce Vita

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A photo essay contrasting mass tourism in Asturias and Cantabria against city life in the same region. This reflects the growing tensions between increasingly wealthy and mobile tourists and and increasingly impoverished local population that sees little benefit from the tourist industry.

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Black and White

London River Walk

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A short set of images taken along the River Thames, mainly following the Thames Path. These were taken to test out a newly acquired 90mm Elmarit-M lens, which despite being more than 20 years old seems to be working amazingly well. The lens is extremely sharp, but lower-contrast than most modern lenses – although this is easily corrected when processing the images.  

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Black and White

To The Beach

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A set of landscape photographs taken along the coast near Lynton and Lynmouth from a rather cold and wet weekend trip to the UK. It is not exactly Cannes, but the slightly less than hospitable weather makes a nice backdrop for the black and white imagery. All images shown here taken with the M 262 and 50mm Summilux, processed in Capture One 11. These would have worked very well on Delta 100 film, but it would have needed a heavy tripod to deal with the lighting and wind. At one […]

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Black and White

The City

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The first of two sets of high-contrast black-and-white travel photographs – in this case taken during a rather damp and cold day’s walk around Exeter. These were shot digitally and processed in Capture One. The results are very different from the usual film images, but for short trips such as this there is a lot to be said for the convenience of a digital camera.        

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Photography

Salamanca Calligraphy

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One of the unusual architectural features of Salamanca is the unusual calligraphy, which is used to mark buildings and entrances in the street. Typographically, I am not quite sure what to make of the lettering style. There are numerous sources online for fonts that reproduce the basic letters, but the kerning is consistently somewhat eccentric.

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Photography

Postcards from Padova

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A slideshow of images taken on a recent trip to Padova, Italy. This was not really a photographic trip, although it was a chance to put the M262 (camera, not aircraft) through its paces following the six week long repair in Wetzlar. Padova is a fascinating city that is a microcosm of Italy. There are many contrasts: the old town and new developments, exemplary classical art and modern graffiti, young and old. You could easily spend weeks observing and photographing in this town, and still not run out of new […]

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Photography

Salamanca Blue

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A short set of images showing a different side to Salamanca, balancing the green and gold posts, and a reminder that even if this is a UNESCO site, it is also a large active city. These were all shot with a micro 4/3 camera system, and I would defy anyone to get better results from a Leica. In fact, things like focus accuracy and overall image sharpness at slow shutter speeds are reliably better than Leica digital thanks to the fast AF and image stabilisation. The shooting experience may be very […]

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Photography

Salamanca Gold

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A short set of images from the church and university buildings at Salamanca. The old part of Salamanca has an astonishingly consistent architectural style, for which it deservedly is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and that style is largely governed by the intersection of Catholicism iconography and the characteristic yellow stone used for many of the older buildings. I am not a great fan of this rather baroque styling, but the light and colours in many of these buildings is astounding.  

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Photography

Perpignan – Objets Trouves

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A short collection of images from Perpignan. These are very random and very unevenly edited, and show a very partial view of the town. These were originally intended to form part of a set of images around the theme of the recent French presidential election, as Perpignan is very much a microcosm for the issues central to the election. Unfortunately, conflicts on time meant that it was not possible to complete the necessary sequence, and the images here do not attempt to show the tension between the French middle classes, […]

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