Autumn in the woods
iPhone SE2, built-in 3.99 mm lens, 1/60 sec, f/1.8, ISO 200.
Walking from Montigglersee to Schreckbichl, early autumn
Category: Photography
Winter morning, Girlan
iPhone SE2, built-in 3.99 mm lens, 1/287 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20.
A cold but bright winter morning. Light snow overnight, clearing before dawn. Frost in the air. Just after 8 am, but the sun is only just hitting the mountains with warm light. Bozen, in the valley below, is still shrouded with fog.
St Anthony’s Way
iPhone SE2, built-in 3.99 mm lens, 1/800 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20.
St Anthony’s Way, Autumn. Two tiny terriers snarl ferociously at me when I stop to take the photo, defending their territory against all-comers. It’s good there’s a sturdy fence between us, or they’d tear me to shreds. Or I’d tred on them without noticing.
Girraween National Park, Drought, 5 January 2020
Pentax K-x, Tamron 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100. HDR created using Lightroom.
Pentax K-x, Tamron 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, 1/50 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100. HDR created using Lightroom.
Pentax K-x, Tamron 10-24mm lens @ 17mm, 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100. HDR created using Lightroom.
Pentax K-x, Sigma 18-125 mm lens @ 40mm, 1/100 sec, f/8.0, ISO 500, Exposure bias -0.3.
Girraween National Park, near Ballandean, Granite Belt, Queensland, Australia. An early morning walk from 6am-7:30am, before the punishing heat of the drought made walking unpleasant.
Melbourne photos, 23rd January 2018
Street art, Hosier Lane, Melbourne, 23rd January 2018 11:43
Pentax K-x, 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, 1/100 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100. HDR created using Lightroom.
Street art, Hosier Lane, Melbourne, 23rd January 2018 11:43
Pentax K-x, 10-24mm lens @ 24mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 640
Tram, Melbourne, 23rd February 2018 13:03
Pentax K-x, 10-24mm lens @ 24mm, 1/4 sec (handheld), f/32, ISO 100
Centre Place, Melbourne, 23rd January 2018 12:48
Pentax K-x, 10-24mm lens @ 17.5mm, 1/50 sec, f/8.0, ISO 1250
Storm light in the vineyards
Storm Light, Vineyards, Beaune, France, 9th September 2017 19:43
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 18mm, 1/320 sec, f/8.0, ISO 400. Panorama created using Lightroom.
Late summer, at the tipping point of autumn. Harvest ahead. Cycling back to Meursault in the early evening. Rain hanging around, spitting, threatening. Grey clouds glowering overhead. As the sun disappears, the clouds relent & turn golden with the dusk; bluegrey & gold, like slate and fire, iron and gold. However the day seemed prior to this, it is a benediction; it is like the threat inherent in those splattered rain drops has passed and been forgotten.
But I was heading back to Meursault. Still in Beaune, not yet in Pommard, & needing to be back before the light faded for the evening. But I couldn’t move on: the light changed from gold to galah pink, the clouds still glowering slate grey above the vineyards.
Sunset, Vineyards, Beaune, France, 9th September 2017 19:59
Pentax K-x, 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 400. Panorama created using Lightroom.
Eventually, I got back to Meursault. Late, I struggled to find a restaurant open. Luckily, the Hôtel du Centre was still open, just. The dinning room was starting to empty. A couple, a businessman polishing off the last of a bottle of wine. I had magret du canard and a glass of red burgundy. My luck was still with me: the duck was beautiful, rich, flavoursome, seared outside and bloodily red inside. The sole mishap, that I was given a glass of Côtes-du-Rhône instead of the requested Santenay, was no mishap in that it was an excuse for two glasses of wine rather than one. What had been a desperate attempt to get something, anything, to eat, was anything but. What was to be a simple meal, an unexpected pleasure. Serendipity! The meal finished with a glass of an armagnac older than me, and a petit café.
Walking back afterwards, the sky was perfectly dark. Sodium lights lit the village, and the edges of vineyards. I walked past a clos, and looked in through wroughtiron gates at the vines, sleeping before the harvest, unworldly under the orange light. Gold to pink to orange.
Vineyard on the edge of Meursault at Night, 9th September 2017 21:46
iPhone 4s, builtin 4.28mm (~35mm) lens, 1 sec, f/2.4, ISO 800. Shot using Camera+ 9.1.
Lantau Island, Hong Kong
Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 45mm, 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200.
Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 20mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100.
Victoria Harbour from the Lantau Island ferry, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 20mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100.
HK in August, so the humidity is simply too much. I escape the city for an afternoon, to Lantau Island. It’s a bit away from the crowded streets of Central or Wan Chai. Indeed, it seems incongruous that such an area should sit so close to the urban singularity of HK, but there it is. Opposites don’t always contradict. Indeed, HK Island itself has its areas of forest: mostly, I suspect, on sites too steep to build on.
Lantau, in contrast, is small towns and villages straggling out to farmland, country houses, temples, mountains, old roads, abandoned bicycles. With no real plan, I walked around, pleased to be surrounded by fields. And, eventually, the edge of the forest, a river, a waterfall. The path goes on. I don’t have time for a long walk, I need to be back in town to see an opera that evening, but I keep onwards. There’s always the urge to look around one last corner, see one last skyline. The temple signposted ahead. A field with a striking arrangement of trees and hills.
Eventually I head back to the ferry, and to the city. By the time I get to Central, the light is golden.
Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 98mm, 1/100 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100.
John Clare, “Dewdrops”
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia, 24th June 2006 16:54
Pentax Optio S45, 10.2mm (~61.4mm) on inbuilt zoom lens, 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100
The dewdrops on every blade of grass are so much like silver drops that I am obliged to stoop down as I walk to see if they are pearls, and those sprinkled on the ivy-woven beds of primroses underneath the hazels, whitethorns and maples are so like gold beads that I stooped down to feel if they were hard, but they melted from my finger. And where the dew lies on the primrose, the violet and whitethorn leaves they are emerald and beryl, yet nothing more than the dews of the morning on the budding leaves; nay, the road grasses are covered with gold and silver beads, and the further we go the brighter they seem to shine, like solid gold and silver. It is nothing more than the sun’s light and shade upon them in the dewy morning; every thorn-point and every bramble-spear has its trembling ornament: till the wind gets a little brisker, and then all is shaken off, and all the shining jewelry passes away into a common spring morning full of budding leaves, primroses, violets, vernal speedwell, bluebell and orchis, and commonplace objects.
— John Clare
Growing through rock, Giraween National Park
Giraween National Park, 17th March 2012 13:17
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 32mm, 1/50th sec, f/13, ISO 200.
I’m not sure what this tree is trying to tell me, but I want to learn from it.
Fog, Upper Tooloom, Christmas
Wallaby Creek, Upper Tooloom, NSW, Australia, 27th December 2015 o3:52.
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 30mm, 30 sec, f/8.0, ISO 12800.
I woke early — it was light out, and I could see clearly across towards forested hills. Early morning fog pooled in the valley, covering the dam, flirting with the hills. The light was diffuse, flat, pearlescent. It seemed as bright as day — a dismal, foggy autumn day, at least. As I watched, the fog gradually eroded away at the hills. I debated internally: was this worth a photo? Could I capture it?
Eventually, I gave in. The hills had all but disappeared. And it was not, I found, as bright as day. My first few exposures were pitch black. I had to ignore the light meter: 30 seconds, with the sensor sensitivity at its highest setting, were needed. The landscape seems lost in fog and grain: dreamlike, dreaming.
It was an odd day, that. The hills glowered in fog, which came and went, revealing and hiding the vista. By evening, the light went weird: first sepia, then purple, as the day faded into evening.
Wallaby Creek, Upper Tooloom, NSW, Australia, 27th December 2015 15:49.
Wallaby Creek, Upper Tooloom, NSW, Australia, 27th December 2015 18:53.
Wallaby Creek, Upper Tooloom, NSW, Australia, 27th December 2015 19:01.