Landscape

Collserola

Serra de Collserola
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A set of images from a walk up on the Collserola de Serra, the ring of hills that separate Barcelona from the inland areas of Catalunya. The Collserola is not the most aesthetic of parkland areas, with low mediterranean woodland and scrub areas. There are numerous tracks all over, and navigation is easy, particularly if you use Organic Maps which unlike Google or Apple Maps, shows most of the possible paths. This particular walk started improbably from the L1 metro stop at Baró de Viver, running up through the city […]

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Photography

December

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A short set of images taken in December. This has been a challenging month for photography as a lot of time has been spent migrating tsoniq.com to hugo and complete a set of synthesiser plugins that have been waiting a long time for release. These were taken on a series of walks around Barcelona, exploring the railway around Sants and Bellvitge, as well as the city centre. There were surprisingly few festive lights this year, but there is always something interesting to find at night. All images taken with the […]

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Landscape

El Prat

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A set of images from a walk from El Prat to Castelldefels, at the very edge of the Barcelona metropolitan area. I much prefer the beaches in winter, when the temperature is more bearable and there are fewer people. The walk is about 20km, with quite a lot on sand, necessitating an early start from the El Prat railway station. From there, there is a short walk through the town to start of the wet lands and dunes that surround the airport, which dominates everything not least for the constant […]

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Culture

Bootstraps

Walking the Dog, Barcelona.
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It has been almost two years since the last post. COVID took a pretty heavy toll on going out to take street photographs, and it has been difficult to summon up enthusiasm to post new content. This post is an attempt to bootstrap the blog-writing process again. The intervening time has seen many changes. Aside from the pandemic, there is the continuing fall out from Brexit with its catastrophic economic, social and political effects, the war in Ukraine which impacts and threatens everyone, and the continuous unfolding disaster that is […]

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Black and White

35mm

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Spain’s massive COVID spike not withstanding, it is now at least possible, if not necessarily advisable, to go out and photograph on the streets again. These are some of the images from the initial attempts to resume the Barcelona Dark project. In fact, getting back to photographing at night again is proving somewhat challenging. Having moved home more or less during the worst of the pandemic earlier this year, the surrounding area is different and needs a different approach to photography. I also feel like I have lost a lot […]

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Black and White

C330

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A set of test images shot on a Mamiya C330 TLR with HP5+ film. These are from a few rolls taken to test out the camera and 80mm lens, in anticipation of a longer term project, for which I wanted a higher resolution camera that could conceivably be used without a tripod and which was not prohibitively expensive. The C-series TLRs with leaf shutter lenses and lack of a flappy mirror are a good candidate for this, and more versatile than TLRs such as the Rolleiflex thanks to the ability […]

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Black and White

Quarantined

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Barcelona, and indeed all of Spain, is now shut down thanks to the COVID-19 emergency. It is now illegal for people to go out of their homes other than for essential purposes such as food or medical supplies, and the police are actively enforcing the measures and fining or arresting violators.

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Black and White

First shots with the Leica M-A

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This is a short look the Leica M-A film camera, from the perspective of someone used to shooting the technically much more advanced M7. The M7 has been my main film camera for more than five years now. What started as an experiment to reduce the size and weight of camera equipment has ultimately led a growing reliance on Leica M series rangefinders for most of my photography. A key advantage being the ability to keep the same lenses and basic shooting experience in both digital and 35mm film media.

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Photography

Besòs

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A short set of images taken on a walk around the mouth of the River Besòs. This ought to be premium beach front in Barcelona, but a long history of industrial use means that much of it is a dramatic change from the pristine tourist beaches in Barceloneta and around Port Vell.

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Black and White

State of Independence XVIII

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Barcelona’s weeks of fire: after sentences were issued against the Catalan political leaders responsible for the events around the constitutionally illegal 2017 independence referendum and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence, the region has been rocked by both peaceful and (as shown here) rather less peaceful nationalist protests. This is a set of images shot around the upmarket central streets of Passeig de Gràcia and Via Laietana in the centre of Barcelona.

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