• The sea and the sun

  Saturday 27th of January 2018

  My parents are staying at our house while the purchase of their new house grinds along. I don’t get on well with them and have been feeling stressed lately, so Zoe and I took Em out for breakfast at the Lighthouse Café in Lowestoft, then for a walk along the seafront. A lovely shiny day it was, too! Cold, but good for clearing one’s head. After being up and alert while Zoe and I ate breakfast, Em …

  • black-and-white
  • lowestoft
  • morning
  • sea
  • seafront
  • sunny
  • winter
  • winter-sun

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• Further darkness

  Saturday 13th of January 2018

  As is common this time of year, the sky was quite heavily overcast. Despite the gloom, Zoe and I and my parents went to Norwich, primarily to look at beds for my parents’ new house, but we also went for lunch at Giraffe. We took Em, who was again remarkably well-behaved despite the usual initial upset when we, big meanies that we are, put her in the car seat. Gosh she doesn’t like being put in the…

  • black-and-white
  • gloom
  • norwich
  • overcast
  • shadow

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• Afraid of the dark

  Thursday 11th of January 2018

  The monochrome preset I usually use for my raw files in Capture One has a small amount of shadow boost applied, and I tend to increase it even more when there are large dark areas in an image. As I mentioned in a previous post , though, darkness isn’t really a bad thing in pictures, depending on the feeling one is trying to evoke. Certainly for these pictures, taken on a dull overcast winter afte…

  • black-and-white
  • dark
  • overcast
  • shadow
  • x-raw-studio

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• Southwold Diptychs

  Sunday 24th of December 2017

  The weather forecast said it’d be shiny at dawn today but that turned out not to be the case. Instead, it brightened up about 11 o’clock, so Zoe and I made the most of it and went to Southwold with Emily for a nice walk by the sea. As with yesterday I shot with the Acros +Y film simulation, and +2 highlights, +4 shadows. Generally it worked well, but there were a couple of cases where +4 shadows w…

  • beach
  • black-and-white
  • diptych
  • pairs
  • sea
  • seaside
  • southwold
  • sun
  • winter

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• Acros is better than I thought

  Saturday 23rd of December 2017

  Since I got my XT2, I’ve never really given the Acros film simulation a shot, but lately I’ve been trying it and been pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if I just didn’t have the right highlight and shadow contrast settings, but it’s got a lot of subtleties that I hadn’t appreciated before. The way the colour filters (e.g. Acros +Y) affect rendering is lovely – not too strong, but enough to make a…

  • acros
  • black-and-white
  • film-simulation
  • fujifilm
  • jpeg
  • lowestoft

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• Winter sunrise at the beach

  Tuesday 19th of December 2017

  I sleep too much, and poorly. I suspect the second thing is a result of the first, so I’ve resolved to try getting up earlier, since going to bed later isn’t really an option as it would disturb my wife and baby daughter too much. contrails across the dawn sky And so! Up before dawn, although since it’s winter that’s not saying much; the sun doesn’t rise until about half past 8. Still, it’s nice t…

  • beach
  • cold
  • colour
  • dawn
  • early
  • frost
  • pakefield
  • sunrise
  • winter

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• Black and white baby

  Wednesday 6th of December 2017

  It’s been a while since I read Koudelka’s Gypsies , but it’s got me thinking: all my complaining about the Fuji 23mm f/2 seems a bit photo-nerdery in the face of the grainy, dark, often blurry pictures in this book. Pictures that work just fine, and in fact are entirely appropriate for the subject matter. So here’s me trying to emulate Koudelka’s style, or at least the superficial look of the pic…

  • baby
  • black-and-white
  • emily
  • koudelka

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• Gorleston, winter shiny

  Saturday 2nd of December 2017

  Since Emily was born, Zoe and I naturally haven’t had the opportunity to get out much – newborns require almost constant attention! Still, she’s 8 weeks old now, and Zoe’s more confident about breast-feeding in public, so we’ve been able to have short trips into Lowestoft and, today, Gorleston, without too much drama. The forecast yesterday threatened rain but fortunately it was one of those glori…

  • colour
  • emily
  • gorleston
  • shiny
  • winter-sun

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• I'm a dad now

  Tuesday 10th of October 2017

  My wife gave birth 3 days ago to a little girl: sleepy baby Emily at 2 days old She is a very curious little thing! curious Emily looking out the bedroom window

  • baby
  • emily
  • family
  • newborn

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• The rain comes

  Saturday 16th of September 2017

  So, been a while. Haven’t been feeling very inspired lately – I’ve been taking my camera out a lot, but just not finding much worth shooting, or making much effort to. Still, the car needed to go in for MOT so that meant some time to kill, which basically meant enforced camera time. Alas, as the title says, the weather was overcast-into-rainy. Such is the way of things in late September in England…

  • autumn
  • lowestoft
  • overcast
  • rain
  • weather

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• Walking in woods and fields

  Saturday 22nd of July 2017

  A while back I went for another nice walk in nearby Dunwich Forest, but for whatever reason didn’t get around to making a blog post of it. So, here we are: some pictures of a roughly hour-and-a-half walk. field edge forest path leading into shadow trail of stones over a large puddle field gate latch hot, dusty forest road red tree and green trees telegraph pole and wires extreme closeup of forest …

  • dunwich-forest
  • forest
  • path
  • shadow
  • sunny
  • woods

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• Stormy skies

  Saturday 22nd of July 2017

  Storms are great for generating dramatic skies: the mix of dark clouds and bright, sunlit sky behind has something magical about it. brewing storm behind houses stormclouds over residential area bright sky between dark clouds and dark ground

  • black-and-white
  • clouds
  • lowestoft
  • photography
  • sky
  • storm

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• More Norwich wandering

  Saturday 15th of July 2017

  Took these a while back when Zoe’s parents came to visit, and we had a walk around Norwich. For a change, I brought the 18-55 along instead of the usual 23/2 or 35/1.4. It worked out… ok, I guess? The convenience was nice, and if I don’t go pixel peeping, the sharpness is fine too. The bokeh was… not really a factor on this day, but I know for sure it can get weird at times. Still, there was o…

  • 18-55mm
  • city
  • colour
  • construction
  • fuji
  • norwich
  • photography

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• Fairground: closed for the evening

  Saturday 27th of May 2017

  I’d been sitting indoors all day playing Nier: Automata and was feeling a bit guilty about it, so I went out to get some fresh air and walk around a bit. I didn’t really have anything particular in mind, but decided on Lowestoft seafront as it’s close by and I could hopefully get some good pictures before the sky went fully dark. Turns out the fair’s in town, although at this time of the day it’…

  • evening
  • fairground
  • lowestoft
  • photography
  • rides
  • sunset

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• Telephoto Oulton Broad

  Thursday 11th of May 2017

  I’ve had an old Pentax-M 135mm f/3.5 for a while now – something I inherited along with a Pentax MX film SLR that sadly no longer works (the mirror is gummed up). sailing dinghies on Oulton Broad I’m really not much of a telephoto shooter – the only other long lens I can use is my wife’s Fuji XC 50-230mm, which is… well, about what you’d expect for a modern low cost plastic lens: nothing particu…

  • equipment
  • evening
  • fuji
  • old-lens
  • oulton-broad
  • pentax
  • photography
  • summer
  • telephoto

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