April 03
Red Giant Leaf
This is week 14 after Covid 19. Felt so grim with the virus I suspended photography until I got negative test results. A friend advised me to do nothing and really that’s exactly how I felt for a lot of the time.
Anyways I felt well enough to start taking snaps again, however I was reluctant to leave the house so as the weather was OK I used the garden as a source of images.
Red giant is a mustard green that has self sown in the veg bed. I liked the curve of the central vein and the contrast between the white and the dark red leaves. When processing the image I went for a monochrome treatment with a degree of softness.
Melianthus Flower
The Melianthus shouldn’t really be flowering at this time of year but it is. Again I went for a soft look for this image. I always hope that a pollinating insect would come along and I’d get seeds but this not a native plant and our bees and hover flies are not interested
April 04
Pansy
The weather has been by turns been sunny, blustery and rain showers. The wind has been a very cold northerly so I’ve not wanted to go out too much. I took the chance to grab this pansy flower in the window box outside my room.
April 05
Cerinthe
Cerinthe self sows all over the place. This particular one is right by the path so easy to get a shot of. I like the rather shy flowers with their deep blue/purple colouring. The bees also seem to like the flowers.
April 06
Lemons
Another day of sharp rain showers and occasionally hail coupled with the recovery from covid made me want to stay in. However I was struggling with subject matter and ended taking this shot of lemons in a plastic mesh bag.
As still lives go it is not very inspiring but then life has got a bit thin of late.
April 07
Composition
Looking around the house I decided to use an ordinary object as the basis for a bit of compositing.
I raided my back catologue for the different layers of imagery and came up with this rather sinister looking beast. After the low point of yesterdays lemons I think this was a bit of an improvement.
April 08
Hover Fly
Pulmanaria is always an early flower and attracts bees and hover flies on warm days. Although this is not the sharpest shot I find the softness pleasing. Photographers bang on about lenses being ‘tack sharp’ which is all very well but sometimes the pursuit of the sharp image becomes cold and clinical. For me what comes across from this image is the fragility of the insect and the flower. How they depend on each other for life and the delicate balance that allows life to thrive. We are upsetting that balance at our peril.
April 09
Shop Dummy
Finally I felt I just had to go out with the camera. Its all very well sitting at home or prowling round the garden for shots but sometimes you have to be in the world.
The vintage market on Stokes Croft in Bristol always has interesting objects on the pavement. Today I found this golden boy.
I used my vintage 135 mm Pentax manual lens on my K1mkii for the shot. There is something about the image quality of this lens that I like. True it does suffer from chromatic aberration especially in bright light on high contrast subjects, but that can be easily fixed in software. The other aspect of vintage lenses is that they are cheaper than the modern digital lenses. So glad that Pentax have not changed their lens mount since the 1970’s, other than adding electrical contacts for auto focus and exposure. I also like working manual mode, takes me back to my film roots.
Right so the 365 project is back on track for the time being. I will add a few weeks on to the back end to make up the time lost to covid 19.
Hope you enjoyed the pictures.
