Category Archives: Architecture - Page 2

Half-frame

Posted by on November 26, 2011 No comments

I recently tried out my newest camera, a 1963 Canon Demi. For those who don’t know, this is a half-frame camera, meaning that the negatives are half the usual size and you get twice as many negatives on a film. This was significant when the camera was new in the 1960s: colour photography was just coming out and was expensive, so half frame cameras reduced the price somewhat. This isn’t why I bought it – I wanted it because of its tiny negatives (meaning you get more grain), cheap lens (for that lo-fi look) and its unusual default portrait orientation.

The camera has a sort of semi automatic metering system. It’s tiny and easy to carry around and the emphasis is on convenient picture-taking rather than technical details. I noticed that this carried over into my photography, and most of the pictures I took on the Demi’s first outing were far from technically perfect, but more “free and easy” and probably more interesting as a result.

All of these shots are taken in different areas around Bristol.

Oldbury Court

Castle Park

Victoria Street

Christmas Steps

St Michael's Hill

Earlier this year, street artists were invited to come and paint graffiti on various buildings along Nelson Street. Perhaps the black & white film I was using doesn’t do these vibrant works of art justice, but I like the graininess.

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

Graffiti on Nelson Street

St Michael's Hill

Royal Fort Garden

Leaves

Royal Fort gatehouse

These works are taking place to demolish the old children’s hospital to make way for the new University biological silences building. Most of the demolition work is to remove and 1950s brick and concrete structure. The original frontage of the old building is being kept, and will be incorporated into the new building.

Demolition site

On Troopers Hill at night

Posted by on November 18, 2011 No comments

Tonight found me on top of Troopers Hill, which overlooks the city of Bristol. It’s about three miles from the centre, so it affords pretty spectacular views.

Click this image below for a somewhat larger version, or inspect the really huge version.

View of Bristol from Troopers Hill

I also took this long-exposure shot of the chimney on the top of the hill.

Troopers Hill chimney

First go on the Horseman

Posted by on September 25, 2011 1 comment

No, not a man on a horse. My new Horseman 980 field camera! For geeks: it’s a view camera with movements. For normal people: it’s a complicated and fiddly camera, excellent for landscape work.

Horseman 980

I ran a film through the camera to make sure it was more-or-less working before taking any hard-to-repeat photos. The camera seems to be free of light leaks and other major faults, although this film produced some rather thin negatives. Might be an inaccurate shutter or aperture, or poor development of the film on my part.

First let me start with a simple demonstration of what the movements can do. The first picture of Brunel’s bridge has the camera in normal alignment. The picture looks “normal”.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

In the second image, I have tilted the lens away from bridge and in doing so, I have caused only the very centre of the bridge to be in focus. The near and far bridge towers are blurred. This can be a bit of a gimmicky effect, but it makes the subject look like a model. This is commonly called tilt-shift miniature because the camera is physically tilted and shifted.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

I’ve used the same effect again with this clock tower in Stoke Park. I’ve also used front rise to “look up” at the tower without it tapering towards the top. Unfortunately I appear to have double-exposed this picture by mistake.

Clock tower

And here are a couple more pictures, taken around Bristol.

Evening sunlight in Oldbury Court

Dower House

Like I said, this was mainly a test roll to make sure the camera was working and to start to get a feel for it. I hope there will be lots of improving pictures on this website in future.

Bristol from a vantage point

Posted by on August 30, 2011 No comments

While I was out taking my panorama of Bristol at the weekend, I also packed a long lens and went to see what I could see. This was also the first outing of my “new” Canon FTb, which I bought mainly for astronomy. Paired with a 400mm lens, it’s an excellent combination.

As a cyclist, I frequently curse Bristol’s steep undulations. But as a photographer I love them, because they let me take shots like these. This one centres on the campus of Bristol University.

This one shows a tower block in Bedminster and a slightly more distant office building in the centre.

The cranes on the horizon are being used to construct the new hospital at Southmead, and are almost five miles away.

The tower block in Bedminster again, this time seen with the rounded building in Cabot Circus and the square one at Castlemead.

Cabot Tower, on Brandon Hill.

Here’s Purdown BT tower. It’s almost 4½ miles from where I took the picture.

I’m not quite sure where these houses are, but I like the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of rooftops.

A little bit more zoomed out, here we see Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge towering over south Bristol.

The prominent central buildings, (e.g. the University, Broadmead and Clifton Suspension Bridge) are about three miles from my vantage point on Nover’s Common. Three miles through the atmosphere of a city causes a lot of haze, and the pictures are lacking in sharpness and contrast if you inspect them closely. Given that the majority of urban haze is in the ultraviolet and blue regions of the spectrum, I could probably achieve much better sharpness with an orange filter, which would not register the blue end of the spectrum. It didn’t look that hazy to the eye, but human eyes are less sensitive to ultraviolet radiation than camera film, and it’s also surprising how good the brain is at showing you what you want to see!

The images are also quite grainy. This is probably due to the fact I overexposed a little and pulled the films in development. Next time I will be more careful with my metering!

Another panorama of Bristol

Posted by on August 28, 2011 No comments

Yesterday I shot a panorama of east Bristol from a vantage point in north-east Bristol. It turned out OK, but it didn’t show the characteristic landmarks in Clifton and the centre. So today, I went to south Bristol and found a vantage point in Nover’s Common that overlooks most of the city.

This panorama starts at the left with Bedminster Down, including the BBC radio mast. It swings across an industrial estate into Bedminster. About one-third along, you can see the blue and red stands at Ashton Gate football stadium. Just up and left a bit from the stadium, you can see Ashton Court Manor. This is actually on the other side of the River Avon, which the Suspension Bridge crosses. About halfway along, you can see three red-brick warehouses by the docks. Close to them, the majestic Clifton Suspension Bridge. Panning further right, the traditional church spire belongs to Christchurch, Clifton, while the modern double spire is the Catholic cathedral, also in Clifton. In the foreground, the distinctive red and white blocks are flats in Bedminster.

About two-thirds along, the slender tower crossing the horizon is the Cabot Tower in Brandon Hill nature reserve. A bit further right, the fat tower is the Wills Memorial tower, part of the University of Bristol. Further right still, the square building with turrets is the H H Wills Physics building at the University. Surrounding this building, most of the other large building are part of the University, including the departments of chemistry, engineering and medicine. Slightly down the hill and more in the foreground is Bristol Cathedral.

The multi-storey building with the silver column up the side, some three-quarters along, is Colston Tower. There are numerous other multi-storeys here but the next notable one is the squat-looking one. This is by the river on Victoria Street. Moving along rightwards, the red and white tower block is in Bedminster. The spire belongs to St Mary’s Redcliffe. The silver, rounded building is in Broadmead while the blocky one with the vertical stripes is the Castlemead tower. The beige tower block is very close to the red and white one we just saw.

Finally in the distance we can see the Purdown TV mast, and further still, the yellow façade of Dower House, where I stood yesterday to take my panorama of east Bristol.

On the map below, my vantage point is the southernmost one on the map, in Knowle.

Clevedon pier

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

Living in Bristol and aspiring to be a landscape photographer, it was inevitable I would one day visit Clevedon pier. When I visited in June, it started to rain just as I got there. I was initially disappointed (and wet) but now I’ve come to inspect the negatives, I think the inclement weather adds a lot of atmosphere to the scene.

Colour in the Conway

Posted by on June 17, 2011 No comments

I shot a roll of colour film in my Conway box camera. It’s interesting because being a 1950s model, it wasn’t designed for colour use. You might think it wouldn’t make much difference, but the lens is neither coated nor corrected for chromatic aberration, so you end up with a low-contrast, soft and dreamy image. These are my favourites from the roll.

This is my brother, Edmund.

And these young men are the Squanderers – Cambridge University’s men’s hockey third team. They’re in fancy dress after their 2011 Varsity match against Oxford’s Infrequents.

And finally, here’s a picture of the second Severn crossing. This really hasn’t been edited at all – it really is that soft, yellow, faded and vignetted. And this is why I love analogue photography.

Salisbury Cathedral

Posted by on June 2, 2011 No comments

On our recent trip to Salisbury, we visited the Cathedral. I had set myself a ban on digital photography, and so I took my Mamiya RB67 for landscape shots (such as Stonehenge and Old Sarum), and my Canon AE-1 Program for “portable” photography.

Unfortunately, after I developed the four films on our return to Bristol, naughty little Lou Lou saw them hanging up to dry, and couldn’t resist a crafty swipe. Unfortunately cat fur and damp film doesn’t mix and the films are so dirty, dusty and scratched that they are borderline ruined. I removed as much dust as I could from the negatives themselves and attempted to fix some of the other hairs and scratches digitally after scanning.

We visited the Cathedral one evening at golden hour and I took this picture of the West front.

The next day, I went around the cathedral on my own while Hannah was busy practising with the choir, In Ecclesia Exon.

As it was dark inside and flashes are forbidden, I decided to use my fastest lens, a Canon FD 50mm f/1.8 and some fast Fuji Neopan 1600 film. It seems I either underexposed or underdeveloped it, and the negatives are very “thin”. I’ve managed to recover them somewhat for the website but they are very grainy and lack proper black blacks and white whites.

Still, here goes. Let’s start with a shot of the high altar.

The organ pipes are split into two main cabinets, both above the quire. The bass pipes are around ten metres long, and are located off to one side.

Above the cross-shaped junction of the transepts, I spotted this beautiful vaulted ceiling. I’m not normally a fan of colour photography but on this occasion some colour might do it justice. (I asked in the cathedral shop – they don’t sell film any more!)

The font at Salisbury is very unusual. Instead of the traditional “bowl on a pedestal” design, this one is like a giant dining table. It’s a deep tray of water that is continually replenished and spills gently out into four drains in the floor, one in each corner.

I waited ages for this photo, since it seems that every single tourist who got in the way also wanted to make ripples in it. One guy even let his dog drink out of it!

As soon as I saw the East window beyond the lectern, I immediately visualised a photo. It turned out almost exactly as I had hoped, so I’m delighted.

This is a shot of the West window, at the rear end of the church. It’s the same window that appears in the very first photo. Both this photo and the next one show the series of arches along both sides of the nave that hold the roof up.

Old Sarum

Posted by on May 31, 2011 2 comments

Old Sarum is the site of an ancient hill fort, the oldest settlement that is modern Salisbury. It’s a much more interesting heritage site than Stonehenge, and only half the price to enter!

This view shows part of the ruined royal palace.

I don’t know what this room is or was, but it gave me a sense of there is no escape.

These ruined walls were part of the palace too.

There is a footpath that goes around the top of the motte.

And here’s a shot across the dry moat, showing the spire of Salisbury cathedral.

Stonehenge

Posted by on May 31, 2011 1 comment

On our way to Salisbury at the bank holiday, we stopped off at Stonehenge.

I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed. You can’t get anywhere near the stones and you are confined to a walkway that goes around them. On top of that, it was overcast and grey. Nonetheless, I got a couple of photos that aren’t too bad.